Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management

In our Q3 market commentary, we described the primary economic fears behind a lackluster and trendless market.

Correction fears are overdone – amidst all the chatter about stocks being expensive and due for a correction, Brent’s team dissected price data going back to 1950 and found that corrections and bear markets are rarer than commonly perceived.

A year ago it would have been hard to imagine where we’d be sitting today.

Equity markets continued a torrid run in the fourth quarter, propelling nearly all sectors and asset classes back into the black for 2020. But Q4 was defined by a notable shift in market leadership as cyclical sectors and asset classes bested defensives and growth stocks.

Overall, Brent is optimistic about the U.S. economy and stock market heading into the fourth quarter.

It’s hard to recall a more confusing quarter for investors. While economic data plumbed depression-level depths for most of the past three months, equity markets rallied heavily. This odd juxtaposition led many to opine that markets had disconnected entirely from the economy. We disagree.

We entered the new year with fresh economic momentum fueled by global central bank rate cuts and a tamping down of the trade war. Global markets rallied until mid-January, at which point news of a novel coronavirus outbreak in China emerged.

A new decade, seismic shifts and the importance of diversification.

Never in my investment career can I recall political “happenings” carrying so much weight in daily market movements. Today’s markets are whipsawed by political slings and arrows, often in the form of tweets or breaking news reports. And “investors” increasingly are reacting impulsively to a reality that’s shifting minute-by-minute.

• Investors must channel their inner Justin Bieber and ask themselves, “Is it too late now to say sorry?” More specifically: Did the Federal Reserve tighten so much last year that no matter what they do this year, the recession writing is already on the wall?
• Secondly, are the U.S. and China capable of finding a trade war solution after one side eventually says they are sorry?

Q1 2019 proved to be the exact opposite of Q4 2018; it was the quarter where nearly everything worked. Virtually all asset classes produced positive returns, from U.S. and International equities of all sizes and sectors, to higher quality bonds and junk bonds, and, yes, even commodities floated with the rising tide.

2018 will be broadly remembered as a year when nothing worked and daily stock market volatility spiked. This contrasted with 2017 where seemingly everything pushed higher, and volatility was low. But in 2018, nearly every single asset class and all but one major stock market index (Brazil) around the globe posted negative returns.

It is hard to say with certainty what drives trading on any particular day, but it doesn’t seem a stretch to say that over the past few months a combination of tariffs and Federal Reserve rate hike fears have broadly impacted both equity and fixed income markets.

For much of this recovery and expansion, many have opined that this economic cycle would ultimately end very differently than those of the past. We have resisted this narrative and instead explained our belief that this cycle will indeed follow the same path and end like all others.

2018 began much as 2017 ended, with steadily rising equity markets, low interest rates and burgeoning market optimism. Indeed, investors were increasingly convinced that the lowest stock and bond market volatility since 1965 was set to continue in 2018. Who could blame them?