George Hosfield, CFA, discusses Ferguson Wellman's quarterly strategy titled, "Inflation's Flame Flickers," which addresses the narrow market leadership, the impact of higher interest rates on inflation and how assets are priced at this stage of the economic cycle.
George Hosfield, CFA, discusses the firm's quarterly strategy titled "Stalemate," which highlights the Fed's ongoing battle to tame inflation along with our views on the health of the banking industry and capital market expectations for the balance of the year.
Director and Chief Investment Officer George Hosfield, CFA, discusses the Fed raising interest rates, peaking inflation and our view on equities and volatility across all asset classes in our Investment Strategy titled, “Balancing Act.”
In an otherwise quiet week on Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 turned the page on one of its longest-running bear markets. Rebounding by over 20% from its October lows, the blue-chip index has officially surpassed the threshold marking a new bull market. What is notable about the advance from last fall’s lows is how few stocks have participated in the upturn.
Buoyed by the best quarterly earnings growth in six years, blue chip equities are forging new highs, with investors disregarding the turmoil in Washington and discounting increasingly lofty expectations for the remainder of 2017.
by Ralph Cole, CFAExecutive Vice President of Research
Monster Mash
No holiday better describes earnings season than Halloween. When companies announce earnings, investors are hoping for treats but often times end up getting tricks. In our view, improving corporate earnings are the catalyst to improving stock market returns in the coming year. As we close out the best month for the stock market since 2011, we should review some of the tricks and treats of earnings season.
Treat
Apple reported earnings earlier this week and beat expectations on almost every level. IPhone sales continue to grow at a robust pace around the world. The company sold 48 million iPhones in the third quarter, up 22 percent from last year. Analysts expect the company to sell 79 million iPhones in the final quarter of the year. Average selling prices of the phones continue to rise, which enhances profitability and will lead to $60 billion in free cash flow this year alone.
Tricks
As expected, the energy sector has had a rough time of it this earnings season. Earnings for the S&P 500 energy sector were expected to be down 73 percent this quarter and that indeed has been the case. During these distressing times all companies begin to dramatically scale back investment and reduce headcount. We feel that higher quality companies with good assets, low debt levels and quality management teams will benefit from the eventual rise in oil prices.
Trick and Treat
In no place is the bifurcations of earnings season more evident than in footwear. Nike reported earnings that beat analyst estimates by 12 percent and the stock responded with a nine percent pop the next day. Nike also reported a solid outlook for the coming quarters as well. Sketchers, on the other hand, tricked investors and missed earnings by a whopping 21 percent last week and the stock dropped 31.5 percent with the news.
Why have stocks responded so positively to a mixed earnings environment? Expectations for third quarter earnings had been lowered so much that companies have been able to meet and often beat those reduced forecasts. Also, the much advertised slowdown in China has not had as big of an impact on earnings as investors feared. While the investment slowdown in China has hurt some industrial companies, the Chinese consumer has actually helped the likes of both Apple and Nike.
Takeaways for the week
by Ralph Cole, CFA
Executive Vice President of Research
The Federal Reserve delivered some early Christmas cheer with a new policy statement on Wednesday, and by Thursday afternoon the Dow average had advanced 700 points. Please excuse us for being frustrated by the constant attention to the Fed and the parsing of every statement they utter. This tends to happen during any Fed tightening cycle. The chart below shows the average S&P 500 performance around the last five Fed tightening cycles. As you can see, about six months before the Fed starts raising rates the market goes through a correction of 5–7 percent and volatility rises.
The U.S. economy continues to hum along, and there is no lack of positive economic indicators. We believe that the Fed will be raising short-term interest rates in the middle of next year and they are doing their best to signal that move to the markets well in advance. The most recent examples last week were jobless claims, which dropped to a six-week low, consumer comfort climbing to a seven-year high, leading economic indicators rising an additional .6 percent and retail sales increasing by the most they have in eight months. In short, there is plenty of good economic news to go around, and enough momentum for the Fed to justify raising rates next year.
Wind of Change
While oil prices fell modestly this week, energy stocks began to rally. Since the peak in oil prices in June, the S&P energy sector fell 25 percent. This week oil prices are down another 2 percent, but oil stocks in the S&P were up 7 percent. We can’t say that we are surprised. Whenever you get such a dramatic drop in prices, it tends to produce bargains. Financial buyers aren’t necessarily brave enough to step into these situations, but strategic buyers are. This week Repsol, a Spanish oil company, made an offer to buy Talisman Energy for $12.9 billion. Talisman’s share price was as low as $3.96 on December 8, and now trades for just over $9.00 per share. We made the case last week that the sell-off in oil was overdone, and it appears others are coming to the same conclusion.
Our Takeaways from the Week
