New Dividend Aristocrats For 2020

Last week S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the annual rebalancing of the Dividend Aristocrats. In the rebalancing results, no companies are being removed, but S&P announced seven new additions to the Aristocrats for 2020. This brings the number of Aristocrats to 64 companies. The changes go into effect prior to the market open on February 3, 2020. As noted by S&P, "S&P 500^® Dividend Aristocrats^® measure the performance of S&P 500^® companies that have increased dividends every year for the last 25 consecutive years. The Index treats each constituent as a distinct investment opportunity without regard to its size by equally weighting each company."

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Investor Sentiment Is Mixed But Trending More Bullish

The American Association of Individual Investors' Sentiment Survey release this week showed a continued trend towards more bullishness by individual investors. Bullish sentiment rose 3.8 percentage points to 45.6% and this is up from a low 21.4% in October of last year.

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Investing In An Elevated Market

Two years ago to the day on January 20, 2018 I wrote a post, Will The Stock Market Ever Decline Again?, and it seems in January 2020, investors are faced with the same question. Written commentary today is mirroring commentary of two years ago as January's market has gotten off to a strong start just like in 2018. Historically, strong starts to a January are a positive predictor for market returns in the balance of the year. That was not the case in 2018 as that year was a down year for the S&P 500 Index.

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Small Business Doing Its Part To Sustain Economic Growth

In August 2018 the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index hit a high of 108.8. Since then the NFIB Index has declined to 102.7 as reported in the December NFIB Small Business Optimism report today. In January 2018 though, the NFIB Index level was 101.2 and today's reading shows an improving trend. Noted in the December report was the fact "an increased number of small business owners reported better business conditions and expect higher nominal sales in the next three months. While frequency of plans to raise compensation fell 2 points, it remains one of the highest readings in the survey’s 46-year history. Small businesses continued to hire and create new jobs with actual job creation matching November’s reading, the highest since May."

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Winter 2019 Investor Letter: A Recovery And New Decade

In the fourth quarter of 2019 the S&P 500 Index rose nearly 10% in contrast to 2018 where the Index was down 13.5%. What a difference a year can make. Our Winter 2019 Investor Letter looks at the Decade of 2000's versus the Decade of 2010's and certainly the most recently completed one was rewarding to investors. As the new year and decade unfold the market will grapple with headlines associated with Brexit, the ongoing trade and tariff situation, Central Banks around the world easing again and additional conflict in the Middle East. The market won't move higher in a straight line, but the market's bias over time is one where it does trend higher. Climbing a "Wall of Worry" may be the result in the coming year. Since the decade of the 1980's, only the decade of 2000's saw multiple calendar year declines. The 1980's, 1990's and 2010's each only saw one down year out of ten. So in those thirty years, the market was down in only three of the years.

More insight on our views are covered in the Investor Letter accessible at the below link.

• Winter 2019 Investor Letter

Shocks And Market Impact

From time to time investors are faced with unanticipated shocks to the market. With tensions in the Middle East, and specifically Iran, elevated again, the market will undoubtedly react to events over the course of the next few days, weeks and months. Investors should know though, the shock and damage to the equity market from these shocks historically are short-lived.

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Dow Dogs 2019 Return Unable To Keep Pace With Broader Market

First of all I want to wish everyone a Healthy and Prosperous New Year as a new decade unfolds. The  just completed decade certainly ended with a bang with the S&P 500 Index (SP500) up 31.49% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index (DJIA) up 25.34%. One strategy that significantly underperformed both the DJIA and the SP500 was the Dogs of the Dow investment strategy. Readers may recall from earlier posts the Dogs of the Dow strategy is one where investors select the ten stocks that have the highest dividend yield from the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index after the close of business on the last trading day of the year. Once the ten stocks are determined, an investor invests an equal dollar amount in each of the ten stocks and holds that portfolio for the entire next year. The popularity of the strategy is its singular focus on dividend yield.

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Just Own Something: Hyman & McLennan Global Outlook Part 2 Interview

Consuelo Mack of WealthTrack conducts Part 2 of her interview with Ed Hyman, Vice Chairman of Evercore and Matthew McLennan of First Eagle Investment Management. I published highlights and a link to Part I of the interview last week that focused on the U.S. outlook and below is the link to the Part 2 interview that focuses on the Global outlook. Not surprisingly, China gets a lot of attention from Ed and Matt, but Ed Hyman is cautious on the outlook for China, i.e., growth but slowing growth. Ed does not believe China and trade issues are a game changer to his positive 2020 outlook.

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A Steeper Yield Curve Should Benefit Financial Stocks

In 2018 the Federal Reserve pursued an interest rate policy the led to the yield curve (10y/2y) inverting. This year the Federal Reserve Bank has reduced the Fed Funds rate three times in response to a slowing economy that developed in 2018. The last 25 basis point rate cut occurred in October and some now believe this may be the last cut of this cycle. Coinciding with the last cut was a paper released by the San Francisco Fed that discussed the economic growth benefit of pursuing a negative interest rate policy. One outcome of a lower rate, flatter yield curve policy is the fact banks have difficulty earning an adequate spread on their loans. Now that the Fed seems to be on hold for the moment, and an economy that seems to be improving, the yield curve has begun to steepen with the 10-year Treasury yield rising nearly 30 basis points to near a 2.0% yield. The below chart shows the yield curve from six months ago (red line) to today (green line.) Clearly, the curve has steepened from six months ago.

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Sentiment Tends To Provide Insight Into Future Market Returns

In investing no one metric tends to provide 100% certainty into the future direction of the market or individual stock or bond for that matter. Though sentiment measures do provide insight into the so-called mind of the market, or better yet the mind of the individual or institutional investor. This is one reason I report on sentiment and fund flows from time to time during the year.

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Top Economist Ed Hyman Has Favorable 2020 Outlook For The U.S.

WealthTrack's Consuelo Mack is in the midst of conducting her annual year end interview with Ed Hyman, Vice Chairman of Evercore and this year, Matthew McLennan of First Eagle Investment Management. Part I of the interview below focuses on the U.S. with a later Part 2 interview focusing on the international outlook. As noted by WealthTrack, "Ed Hyman is the Founder and Chairman of its Evercore ISI division and leads its economic research team. He has been voted Wall Street’s Number One Economist for an unprecedented 39 years in Institutional Investor’s annual survey."

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Buybacks Resume Growth In The Third Quarter

Buybacks for companies in the S&P 500 Index turned higher in the third quarter to $175.89 billion after declining from a peak of $222.98 billion in Q4 2018 as represented by the red line in the below chart. With a resumption of higher buybacks, the total of dividend and buybacks increased in Q3 to $299.01 billion versus $284.14 billion in Q2 2019. Quarterly totals for dividend payments consistently maintained growth on a year over year basis, unlike the decline in buybacks.

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Individual Investor Sentiment Swings To Bullishness

Today's AAII release of the Sentiment Survey reported a 6.5 percentage point jump in individual investor bullishness. This increase came mostly from the bearish category as it declined 5.6 percentage poitns. With the bullishness reading now reported at 44.1%, this is above the long term bullish average of 38.0%. The plus one standard deviation above the average is 48% so individual investors are approaching an overly bullish level.

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Just Not Enough Workers

The October Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) released today reported a 235,000 increase in job openings to 7.3 million. The survey continues to show the economy is functioning at a level with more job openings than unemployed individuals. This can be seen in the following two charts with the first one showing only .81 unemployed workers available per job opening. The second chart shows the number of unemployed individuals (5.8 million versus the total job openings (7.3 million.)

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Dividend Income Strategies Lagging In Strong Up Market

Investors positioned for higher stock and bond prices during the year have not been disappointed. With the Federal Reserve pursuing a lower interest rate policy, bond yields declined for most of the year with a commensurate increase in bond prices. Stock prices have mostly trended higher as well with some of the price increase a recovery from last year's fourth quarter selloff. Returns across most asset classes have been favorable as seen in the below chart. The top half of the chart below displays the asset classes with leading returns and is comprised of U.S. market segments with the bottom half largely foreign markets except for the income focused investments like the 10-Year U.S. Treasury.

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Small Business Carrying Its Weight

According to the November release of the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, small businesses have a favorable view on economic growth. The index rose 2.3 points in November to 104.7, the largest monthly increase since May 2018. There was not much to not like in the report as 10 of the seven index components rose.

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Investor Cash Balances Elevated Or Maybe Not So Much

Over the course of the equity rally this year, periodically I have noted the significant level of outflows from equity mutual funds and ETFs. Commensurate with these outflows has been the significant inflows into bond mutual funds and ETFs and money market mutual funds. The Investment Company Institute (ICI) is one organization that tracks fund and ETF flows and for the week ending November 26, 2019, domestic equity funds and ETFs experienced an inflow of $609 million. This was the first domestic equity inflow since mid October. A slightly higher $631 million outflow occurred in international equity vehicles. The magnitude of the equity outflows is seen in the below chart showing cumulative equity outflows this year total $142.7 billion.

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Gold Losing Its Luster

There can be a number of reason for an investor wanting to have an allocation to Gold. One reason for owning Gold is it tends to serve as a safe haven asset and perform well in an environment where economic activity is slowing. On the other hand investors might look to Copper as an investment if they expect a pickup in economic activity as it tends to rise with a growing economy. 

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Conflicting Reports On Manufacturing PMI's

One potential consequence of an economy that is growing at a slow pace is the higher likelihood that reported economic data has a tendency to conflict with some of the other economic reports. An example of this is the report on manufacturing activity today. Both the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and Markit reported November Purchasing Manager Index data with the ISM PMI report coming in at 48.1%, down from October's reading of 48.3%. The Markit PMI was reported at 52.6% up from October's reading of 51.3%. As the below chart shows, the Markit PMI did not dip below 50 when the ISM PMI fell below 50.

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Investing At All Time Highs In The Equity Market

One difficulty for investors in the U.S. market at the moment is the fact it seems to be hitting new highs on what seems like a daily basis. What gets missed by investors though is a market reaching new highs is actually a bullish signal and tends to be a precursor to additional highs. Below is a chart of the S&P 500 Index provided by The Kirk Report and the red dots show instances where the market achieved ten plus new highs within the last twenty trading days. Following the red dot periods the market tends to achieve additional highs. A table that accompanied the chart highlighted, since 1945, in the periods following the 10+ highs in 20 Trading days, the market was up an average of 8.6% one year later, and positive 72.8% of the time.

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