ZHDG - Weekly Market Pulse: A New Paradigm?

2024-04-08 07:25:00 ET

Summary

• The real story of the last three years is that commodities and large cap stocks are the only major asset classes providing returns for a diversified investor.
• Small- and mid-cap value stocks have produced better returns but haven’t kept up with large cap.
• A global 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds is up just 2.4%/year over the last three years.

Markets year to date have been a lot more interesting in the details than the headlines you get in the financial media. The narrative has focused almost exclusively on Artificial Intelligence and the stocks benefitting from it. Large-cap growth stocks – especially in the IT and Communications sectors – have garnered all the attention. But beneath the surface markets are a lot more interesting than that. When I look at the chart of market returns below the thing that jumps out at me is the outperformance of commodities year to date versus the S&P 500 (13.9% vs 9.5%). Although it isn’t listed separately in the chart, gold has also outperformed (+12.5%). Even more interesting, considering the focus of financial market coverage, is the 3 year performance where commodities are the best performing asset class (+18.0% vs 10.2% for the S&P 500)....

For further details see: