Scott Martindale  by Scott Martindale
  President & CEO, Sabrient Systems LLC

The April-August 5-month stretch was the best 5-month period for the S&P 500 (+35%) since 1938. The index was +6.3% higher than its pre-COVID high on 2/19/20 and +56.2% higher than its COVID selloff low on 3/23/20. But any market technician would tell you that the further the market rises without a pause, the more severe the inevitable pullback. And indeed, along came the traditionally challenging month of September and a nasty bout of profit-taking mixed with capital preservation – and exacerbated by the standoff on new fiscal stimulus, an uptick in COVID cases hindering global economic reopening, and the potential for a SCOTUS nomination firestorm. Many of the investor darlings from among the disruptive, secular-growth Technology companies that had been surging so strongly have suddenly fallen hard, with the S&P 500 (SPY) pulling back -10.3% from its 9/2/20 intraday high to its 9/21/20 intraday low and the tech-laden Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) falling -14.3%.

After giving back all of August’s strong gains, perhaps Monday was the capitulation day from which the market can recover anew. Q3 earnings reporting season starts in a couple of weeks, so it will be important to get a read on the trajectory of earnings recovery and forward guidance.

I have written often about the stark market bifurcation that has developed over the past few years, beginning with the unwinding of the “Trump Bump” reflation trade in light of the emerging trade wars. It led to historic extremes in Growth over Value and Large over Small caps, with the broad-market, cap-weighted indexes hitting new highs as investment capital has favored mega-cap, secular-growth Tech and passive, market-cap-weighted ETFs. But today, although I think it is unlikely that investors are giving up on Technology names, their high relative valuations as the economy enters what I see as an early-stage expansionary cycle appear to be opening the door for greater market breadth and some capital rotation into value, cyclicals, and smaller caps.

My expectation is that, as the historic imbalances in Value/Growth and Small/Large performance ratios gradually revert and market leadership broadens, strategic beta ETFs, active selection, and equal weighting should thrive once again. This should be favorable for value, growth-at-a-reasonable-price (GARP), and quality-oriented strategies like Sabrient’s, although not to the exclusion of secular growth industries. In other words, an investor should be positioned for both cyclical and secular growth.

This is why, rather than continuing to wait around for the value/growth performance gap to converge, we chose to introduce new enhancements to our GARP stock selection process to better balance value-oriented cyclical growers with consistent secular growers while also reducing relative volatility versus the benchmark. Moreover, we have leveraged our full suite of 7 core quantitative models to create 11 new strategic-beta, passive indexes. You will be hearing more about these in the near future.

In this periodic update, I provide a comprehensive market commentary, offer my technical analysis of the S&P 500 chart, review Sabrient’s latest fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten US business sectors, and serve up some actionable ETF trading ideas. In summary, while I still have a favorable long-term view on stocks, there will be plenty of volatility ahead. In addition, our sector rankings have a moderately defensive bias (given that the near-term outlook in our fundamentals-based model is muddled and the Outlook scores are tightly bunched), the technical picture looks might be setting up for a bullish reversal, and our sector rotation model sits in a neutral posture. As a reminder, you can find my latest Baker’s Dozen slide deck and commentary on terminating portfolios at http://bakersdozen.sabrient.com/bakers-dozen-marketing-materials.

Read on....

Scott Martindale  by Scott Martindale
  President & CEO, Sabrient Systems LLC

Quick assessment:  We have an historic pandemic wreaking havoc upon the global economy, with many US states reversing their reopenings. We just got the worst ever quarterly GDP growth number, and jobless claims are resurging. The Federal Reserve is frantically printing money at breakneck pace to keep our government solvent, with M3 money supply growth having gone parabolic. We have a highly contentious presidential election that many consider to be the most consequential of our lifetimes. There is unyielding and unappeasable social unrest, with nightly rioting in the streets in many of our major cities. Tensions with China are again on the rise, with a new Cold War seemingly at hand. Hurricanes are threatening severe damage in states that are already reeling from a surge in COVID hospitalizations. And yet the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) has burst out to new highs while the S&P 500 (SPY) is within 3% of its all-time high (although, quite notably, both of these cap-weighted indexes are dominated by a handful of mega-cap, disruptive juggernauts).

Of course, stocks have been bolstered by unprecedented congressional fiscal programs and Fed monetary support, including zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), open-ended quantitative easing (QE), de facto yield curve control (YCC), and the buying of corporate bonds (including junk bonds and fixed-income ETFs – and perhaps will include equity ETFs at some point). This de facto “Fed put” has induced a speculative fervor, FOMO (“fear of missing out”), and a TINA (“There is No Alternative!”) mindset for risk assets – particularly given infinitesimal bond yields and a falling dollar. Furthermore, while COVID cases have risen with the economy’s attempt at reopening, the death rate is down 75% since its peak in April, as the people being infected this time around are generally younger and less vulnerable and hospitals are better prepared.

However, we have witnessed extreme bifurcation in this market, with certain secular growth segments performing extremely well and hitting new all-time highs, while other segments are quite literally in a depression. And although the pandemic has exacerbated this situation, it has been developing for a while. As I have often discussed, when the trade war with China escalated in mid-2018, the market became highly bifurcated to seek the perceived safety of the dominant mega caps over smaller caps, growth over value, and secular growth Technology over the neglected cyclical growth sectors like Financials, Industrials, Materials, and Energy. It rotated defensive and risk-off even given the positive economic outlook. This is also when the price of gold began to ascend. Yes, gold has become much more than just a hedge; it now has its own secular growth story (as discussed below), which is why Sabrient’s new Baker’s Dozen for Q3 2020 includes a gold miner.

So, while Sabrient’s flagship Baker’s Dozen portfolios over the past two years have been dominated by smaller caps, the value factor, and cyclical sectors – to their detriment in this highly bifurcated market – you can see that our newer portfolios since the enhancements were implemented have been much more balanced among large, mid, and small caps, with a slight growth bias over value, and a balance between secular growth and cyclical growth companies.

In this periodic update, I provide a market commentary, offer my technical analysis of the S&P 500, and review Sabrient’s latest fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten US business sectors, and serve up some actionable ETF trading ideas. In summary, while our sector rankings look neutral (as you might expect given the poor visibility for earnings), the technical picture is bullish, and our sector rotation model remains bullish.

As a reminder, Sabrient has introduced process enhancements to our forward-looking and valuation-oriented stock selection strategy to improve all-weather performance and reduce relative volatility versus the benchmark S&P 500, as well as to put secular-growth companies (which often display higher valuations) on more equal footing with cyclical-growth companies (which tend to display lower valuations). You can find my latest Baker’s Dozen slide deck and commentary on terminating portfolios at http://bakersdozen.sabrient.com/bakers-dozen-marketing-materials. To read on, click here....

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