Introduction This week’s edition of the Evergreen Virtual Advisor (EVA) is a return to one of our most popular formats, the Evergreen Exchange. This structure gives three members of our investment team the chance to agree, disagree, or simply comment on a topic of interest. The theme of this issue revolves around common misconceptions in the market. Read More
Fed Storm Rising. It’s been roughly 13 years since I borrowed—and modified—that title from Tom Clancy for our old hardcopy client newsletter, The Strategist. It was written during the early stages of the last Fed tightening cycle, a hiking campaign which was to last for two years, jacking up its overnight rate from the previously-unimaginable level of 1% to a peak of 5 1/4% in June, 2006. Despite the fact the Fed increased rates at 17 consecutive meetings from 2004 to 2006, the S&P 500 rose pretty much steadily throughout this period. Stocks even made a slightly higher high in October of 2007, in the wake of the Fed’s somewhat panicky 50 basis points (1/2%) cut, in September of that year, due to the escalating crisis in the housing market. On the day this sharp rate reduction occurred, the Dow spiked 2.5% while the S&P 500 vaulted an even larger 3%. Investors were clearly remembering the old Wall Street maxim that you don’t fight the Fed. Read More
The Opinion Exchange. One of our primary goals with this newsletter is to provide our readers with a wide range of viewpoints. As noted previously, the risk with this is that we don’t convey a clear idea of our actual views. Yet, we’ve always felt that’s a chance worth taking, particularly since we try to subsequently clear up any ambiguities. Read More
Strange bedfellows: angry voters and market highs. It might seem odd, in the midst of the rampant bullishness engulfing markets since the election—and further stoked by Pres. Trump’s enthusiastically received congressional speech this week—to bring up the topic of social malaise. However, since Evergreen investment team members are congenital contrarians, we will do exactly that in this issue of the Gavekal EVA. Read More
Time for a surreality check. Somehow, I don’t think I’m alone in waking up on certain mornings wondering into what parallel universe I’ve been transported. The daily surreality show I’m referring to includes, but is not limited to, watching what are decidedly unpresidential press conferences by our new president—not to mention an endless stream (of consciousness) tweets—and shockingly public feuds with the US intelligence community. These recurring events have caused global uncertainty surveys to go postal. Read More
In the world of inflation, expectations are important. If you ask most people in the US what they believe inflation is expected to be, they are likely to say around 2-3%...why? Because that is what they have experienced over the past 5-10 years. Read More
It is odd how a single event can cause some notable leopards to change their spots. In this case, the election of Donald Trump has caused reverberations throughout the financial world, and some apparent self-reflection by several of the world’s leading thinkers. Read More
Upsetting the dollar cart? The year 1971 has been on my mind a lot this week. On a personal note, my wife and I have been staying at one of Arizona’s oldest and most charming resorts, the Wigwam, right outside Phoenix. It was established in 1927 by the Goodyear (as in tires) family on a “mere” 17,000 acres. Upon arrival in those days, guests were given a key—and a horse! Even on horseback, it must have taken weeks to see the entire spread. Read More
The investment landscape and headlines of today would be unrecognizable to someone who fell asleep six months ago and suddenly snapped awake. Financial markets have undergone a tectonic shift that few saw coming. Back in the summer of 2016, the prevailing belief was that central banks were all-powerful and would forever push rates lower in a continuation of policies followed since the crash of 2008. In a show of force, the Bank of England announced a fresh cut to their interest rate to fend off an economic seizure in the face of the Brexit decision, the European Central Bank re-upped quantitative easing, and the Fed was maintaining overnight rates at just above zero. Read More
Evergreen initiated a slightly modified version of its annual forecast EVA just over a year ago. We shifted from specific predictions to attempting to identify developments that could catch the investment community off-guard. As we noted at the time, this was an unabashed imitation of what Blackstone’s Byron Wien has done for years (including when he was Chief US Investment Strategist for Morgan Stanley). However, we also did this because it is the most unanticipated events that have the greatest market impact. Read More
