Earnings, Valuations, and Equity Markets

Looking back to 2019, we don’t think that it would be a stretch to claim that lower rates and the dovish approach by the Fed lifted up valuations and played a very significant role in the spectacular rise in equities (not that debt markets did not also perform well)....

Assessing the 2020 Outlook: Part II

In last week’s commentary, we outlined our overall assessment of a decent start for 2020, but expressed our skepticism for the rest of the year (see Assessing the 2020 Outlook: Part I ). The upbeat perspective of most of the analysts for 2020 is based on loose...

Assessing the 2020 Outlook: Part I

We started assessing the outlook for 2020 a few weeks ago. The truth of the matter is that we are facing two almost equally probable scenarios: The first one (adopted by the great majority of analysts) says that growth will continue next year and that the equity...