Insights
Equity Market Commentary - December 2024
|
Takeaways & Key Expectations
|
• |
December 05, 2024
|
Equity Market Commentary - December 2024 |
The following views and perspectives are formed by the work of the Applied Equity Advisors team in managing assets for investors.
While I would love to regale you with the facts behind why the first two phases were so consistent with history, I won’t.
That’s looking backward, and we need to focus on the “optimism phase”.
The answer: MSIM.com
Either look to the right on this page for the links or, using the search finder in the middle of the MSIM.com landing page, type in “US Core,” “Global Concentrated” or “Global Core.”
What bears repeating: I am not a strategist.
I provide timely high-level market commentary to keep our investors up to date on our views. Thank you to those who have invested in our products.
“Why should I buy equities when I get 5% risk-free?” was the most common question we received to our bullish call over the past year. That’s because, in the pessimism and skepticism phases of a bull market, 5% looks attractive.
However, in the optimism phase, 5% does not look nearly as compelling.
That’s why I have been convinced that flows would turn positive (which they have recently2) and investors would become less enamored with cash as we moved into this next phase.
The pushback to my flow argument is completely logical:
Household stock holdings are up 50% since 2019. Despite $7 trillion in money markets, household cash levels are up only 38% during this period3 So, investors’ equity allocations are actually higher. And therefore, they are not going to move any of that $7 trillion into stocks…or so goes the doubter’s argument.
Mathematically that’s correct.
If investors always acted rationally then money would not come off the sidelines.
However, if investors cumulatively acted rationally, why did we experience net liquidations from equities in 2023 after the S&P 500 sold off -25% in 2022?4
The historical 1-year return of equities off -25% declines is 2x the long-term average annual return.5 (a great chart we sent in the October 2022 Slimmon’s TAKE.)
If investors always acted logically, they would have piled into stocks then and not have hit the panic button.
To me, the argument against cash being reallocated screams of someone who has never sat on the front lines as a financial advisor or experienced the daily behavioral side of investing.
My view: The equity market is not a rational beast. Yet its irrationality is completely consistent.
That is why I continue to believe that as we enter the optimism phase, investors will use their cash to chase speculation. It’s what happens in the optimism phase.
But don’t get too far out in front. It’s still only December 2024 and we are just entering the optimism phase.
Our performance this year has as much to do with what we do not own as with what we do own.
As we have articulated all year, Applied Equity has been underweight the defensive sectors of the market. Most notably, consumer staples and health care.
Again, it’s for behavioral reasons.
Early in bull markets, investors tend to flock to “downside risk mitigation. ”Why? Because it’s the “pessimism phase,” a time when losing less consumes investors.
Hence early in bull markets, defensive stocks tend to get expensive relative to the market and relative to their history.
But the longer bull markets last, investors become less interested in “downside risk mitigation/losing less” and more hungry for “upside opportunities/making money.”
That’s when the valuation premium for defensives starts to erode.
This has already started to happen. Consumer staples and health care have woefully lagged the S&P 500 year-to-date.6 However, stocks in other sectors that are perceived as economically resilient have yet to underperform meaningfully.
Therefore, as our co-portfolio manager and chief quant Phillip Kim reminds the team weekly, the defensive valuation relative to the market has yet to get cheap enough to be consistent with previous “euphoric phases.”
As always, we are agnostic to style bets. We do expect that at some point we will be adding more to defensives. It’s simply too early, in our opinion.
Therefore, it might be worth reminding everyone:
The annualized return of the S&P 500 under both President Obama and President Trump (first term) was exactly the same: +16.3%.7
Safe to say that Barack Obama and Donald Trump (first term) pursued very different policies and styles as Presidents. Seemingly, they could not have been more different. Yet the facts are the facts.
Is it just unnecessary complexity and confusion?
Maybe so.
Andrew
|
Head of Applied Equity Advisors Team
Applied Equity Advisors Team
|