Business Cycles
Historically, interest-rate sensitive sectors such as financials and real estate have tended to post the highest returns in the 3 months preceding the first Fed rate cut. Interestingly, industrials, typically a deep cyclical sector, have also tended to post…
The Kansas City Labor Market Conditions Indicator (LMCI) is a broad measure of labor market trends incorporating 24 national labor market variables. It has been on a steady downtrend since 2022, though at 0.6, it remains slightly higher today than it was at…
Brent prices have fallen 6% so far in July, reversing their June gains. Interestingly, these losses are occurring despite escalating Middle East tensions and quickening Chinese industrial profit growth in June (see The Numbers), both of which are…
According to BCA Research’s European Investment Strategy service, a foreign shock is likely to tip the Eurozone economy into a recession because important vulnerabilities have emerged domestically. Policy is restrictive. Real interest rates stand 370bps…
Preliminary estimates suggest that US durable goods orders plummeted in June. They contracted 6.6% m/m, largely disappointing expectations of a faster pace of growth. However, a whopping 127% monthly decrease in highly volatile commercial aircrafts orders…
The US economy has clearly cooled from its above-trend pace of growth in 2023. The consensus view among BCA Research’s strategists project that this deceleration will eventually culminate in a recession by year-end or early 2025. Our US Investment…
The S&P 600 and Russell 2000 have outperformed the S&P 500 by close to 10% since July 9. Small caps typically outperform in the early stages of economic expansions when growth is accelerating, demand-driven inflation is rising and lending standards…
BCA Research’s Global Investment Strategy service remained tactically bullish on stocks for most of 2023, but shifted to neutral at the start of 2024, and downgraded stocks to underweight in late June. Its latest report fleshes out the team’s thinking in…
Investors should overweight US assets and de-risk their portfolios in anticipation of a major increase in policy uncertainty and geopolitical risk surrounding the US election and its global ramifications.
Way back in the 1970s and 1980s, before investment returns were assessed in relation to benchmarks and return of capital had the upper hand over return on capital, BCA researchers were invited to consider the following thought experiment: Imagine you live…