JHML News and Press, John Hancock Multifactor Large Cap From 09/29/21

US equities have not been having a bad time recently, but have certainly been struggling to go higher. China's slowdown, Evergrande contagion worries, supply chain disruptions, energy price surges, an appreciating dollar, rising Treasury yields, US debt ceiling anxiety, lingering Covi...

The Consumer Confidence Index from The Conference Board fell again in September, falling 5.9 points or 5.1 percent to 109.3. September was the third decline in a row and puts the index 19.6 points below the June 2021 peak. Both major components of the index fell for the month. The...

Valuations are high and need to contract. The Fed is tapering and that will tighten financial conditions. The market internals are everything but healthy. For further details see: The S&P May Rise To 5,000 Someday, Just Not Anytime Soon

Given the Fed’s ongoing balance sheet operations, investors fully believe they have protection from a decline. As is always the case, the investing public believes future earnings will justify higher prices during a melt-up. It just never works out that way. While it is ess...

The race toward the Fed’s taper start deadline took an interesting turn last week. Unless the market’s playbook has been permanently rewritten and higher interest rates are no longer the bane for higher stock prices, the bull market may now be living on borrowed time. ...

New orders for durable goods rose again in August, gaining 1.8 percent, the 15th rise in the last 16 months. Total durable goods orders are up 16.9 percent from a year ago. Durable goods orders continue to be strong, particularly the core capital goods components. For furthe...

So, we recently got the 5-10% pullback I warned about, but investors still seem jittery about the stock market. Just because Fed policy will be less loose in the future does not make it tight. There are still plenty of dollars in the system to drive stock prices substantially high...

The S&P 500 yet again survived a challenge of its key uptrend. The Federal Reserve helped catalyze the rebound from another shallow pullback. However, as an interesting caveat, the S&P 500 broke one key predictable pattern in place since the market collapsed at the beginni...

The only comparable period for this market is from the fourth quarter of 1999 to the third quarter of 2000 - the dot-com bubble, which was another period of speculation fueled by loose monetary policy. Though at the end of the quarter, the S&P 500 was priced to return -0.91%/year ...

It seems clear at this point that GDP estimates have been too high. The similarities seem to be more strongly correlated with the 2018 economic and earnings cycle. If history plays out again, earnings should begin showing signs of weakness, setting up the market for a 2018-like fi...