This All Star Charts +Plus Monthly Playbook breaks down the investment universe into a series of largely binary decisions and tactical calls. Paired with our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard and our Playbook Chartbook, this piece is designed to help active asset allocators follow trends, pursue opportunities, and manage risk.
In Focus for August: July brought some relief for investors in diversified portfolios but 2022 has still been a forgettable year in many regards. From an equity market perspective, it’s been a year heavy on volatility and light on strength (more like 2008 than 2017). Bonds haven’t fared much better. Yields are off their highs, but the trend continues to experience one of its most persistent increases in the past 4 decades. It is the persistence of these trends that might be most challenging for investors in the current environment. Bouts of market volatility in recent years, even when they have been severe (like during the COVID lockdowns), have tended to be short-lived. Now investors are living through the most intense and longest lasting downturn in their portfolios since the Financial Crisis. While we can wish for a return to the rising trend environment that was the norm for the past decade+plus, the evidence suggests that is not yet at hand. The focus here is not to call tops and bottoms, but to catch sustained turns.
