It happens all the time. A new strategy emerges from the obscure recesses of the research caverns and morphs into an ETF, mutual fund, or a separate account program. Or perhaps it’s outlined on an investor’s blog for all the world to see. Sometimes there are glowing reviews fueled by compelling back-tests. For the most successful strategies that spawn products, there are big inflows of assets. There’s usually plenty of hype too. But when you peel back the details and drill down into the core of the strategy du jour, you’ll typically find a familiar combination of variables: rebalancing with one or more factor tilts.
Cutting Through Market Noise With Boxplots
Separating the noise from the signal is the bane of modern investment analytics. An excess of opinion and data confound and complicate our capacity to focus on the key decisions for designing and managing investment portfolios. One of my favorite tools for cutting through the clutter is a graphical tool known as boxplots. If I could only choose one charting methodology for analyzing performance data, I’d go with boxplots. Here’s why.
Q3:2013 US GDP Nowcast: +2.1% | 11.04.2013
US GDP is expected to rise 2.1% in this year’s third quarter (real seasonally adjusted annual rate), according to The Capital Spectator’s average econometric nowcast. Today’s revision is slightly higher than the previous 2.0% average nowcast for Q3, which was published on September 25. The government’s initial estimate of this year’s Q3 GDP is scheduled for release this Thursday, Nov. 7.
Book Bits | 11.2.13
● Keynes’s Way to Wealth: Timeless Investment Lessons from The Great Economist
By John F. Wasik
Summary via publisher, McGraw-Hill
Few people know, however, that he was also a daring, steel-nerved investor who built a multi-million-dollar fortune in the stock market while providing financial counsel to the likes of Winston Churchill and FDR. Now, you can learn from–and imitate–Keynes’s success by examining the story of his life and investment strategies, masterfully told by awardwinning author John F. Wasik. As you follow Keynes from his early years with the Bloomsbury Group, through two world wars and the Great Depression Keynes’s theories and practices come to life by way of the historic and personal events that shaped them. Like today’s investors, Keynes faced markets roiled by panic, inflation, deflation, widespread unemployment, and war–and he developed a core set of principles to prosper in every climate.
ISM Manufacturing Index Inches Higher For October
Manufacturing output surprised the crowd with an upbeat number in today’s ISM Manufacturing report for October. This cyclical slice of the US economy expanded a slightly faster rate last month, according to ISM’s index, leaving this benchmark at 56.4–its highest level in 2-1/2 years. That’s something of a shock vis-a-vis the consensus forecast, which warned of a substantial decline for this benchmark to 55.0. That overall prediction from economists contrasts with yesterday’s econometric projection on these pages that anticipated a steady reading for today’s October’s release by way of a slight uptick to 56.3.
Major Asset Classes | October 2013 | Performance Review
October has a reputation for trouble when it comes to market behavior, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at last month’s numbers. There was minimal turbulence in asset prices in October. Aside from commodities, the major asset classes posted another solid batch of gains, building on September’s bull run. The Global Market Index (GMI) posted a 2.8% increase last month, leaving it higher on the year by a solid 12.0%.
New Unemployment Claims Fall Again
It’s Halloween, but there are no goblins in today’s labor market report. New filings for unemployment benefits fell again last week, slipping 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 340,000. That’s still at an elevated level relative to recent history, but we’re again moving in the right direction. The data glitches that harassed this series over the past month or so are receding. In turn, we’re left with the encouraging sight of claims returning to a downward trend, or so it appears. Exhibit A is the 7% year-over-year decline in claims for the week through October 26. That’s the biggest slide since late-September and it suggests that the labor market, although wobbly these days via recent updates on payrolls, continues to grow.
ISM Manufacturing Index: October 2013 Preview
The ISM Manufacturing Index is expected to increase marginally to 56.3 in tomorrow’s October update (scheduled for release on November 1), based on The Capital Spectator’s average econometric forecast. The estimate reflects a trivial rise from the previously reported 56.2 for September. Meanwhile, the Capital Spectator’s average projection is substantially higher than three consensus forecasts for September via surveys of economists. Indeed, all three surveys project that today’s ISM number will decline sharply vs. the previous month.
ADP: Slower Payrolls Growth In October
Payrolls increased this month by the smallest amount since April, according to this morning’s update of the ADP Employment Report. The 130,000 gain for October is near the slowest pace of growth in recent years for this data series and so today’s release raises new concerns for the economy’s outlook. “Any further weakening would signal rising unemployment,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, which partners with ADP to produce the payrolls data. “The weaker job growth is evident across most industries and company sizes,” he notes in a press release (pdf) that accompanies today’s report.
A Drop In Auto Purchases Pinches Retail Sales In September
If you ignore the 2.2% decline in auto sales last month, today’s update on September retail sales looks ok. But cherry-picking the numbers offers a thin if not misleading veil of comfort at the moment. Indeed, the year-over-year change in retail spending dipped last month to a rate that’s close to the slowest pace in three years. Is this a sign of trouble? No one really knows at this point. It’s possible that all the talk last month of a government shutdown and the possibility of a Treasury default skewed the data. Some optimists also reason that the relative shortage of shopping days last month is a factor. Deciding what’s really going on will take a few more monthly updates to sort it all out. Meanwhile, there’s enough weakness in today’s data if you include auto numbers to keep the crowd wondering what happens next.