VNSE News and Press, Natixis Vaughan Nelson Select From 05/31/22

Stocks had a ripsnorter of a rally last week and a lot of people are pondering the question in the title over this long weekend. Sentiment is certainly negative right now by several measures. Sentiment surveys (AAII, Investor’s Intelligence, etc.) are universally negative becau...

Beyond the broad S&P benchmark, 45% of NASDAQ 100 stocks are already off more than 50%, which only happened as part of the larger-than-historically-average bear markets of 2000-02 and 2008-09. The last eight times the S&P 500 was down in a calendar year, bonds finished the yea...

Clorox is a highly profitable and well-managed company. This is underscored by consistently high margins, excellent working capital management, and return on invested capital. Due to inflationary pressures and pandemic-related excess capacities, the company's gross margin has fallen d...

Inflation expectations have kept the Federal Reserve center stage as they commenced their interest rate rising cycle in March. The war in Ukraine and Omicron’s spread in China impacted inflation and supply chains differently, but both delay supply chain normalization. Regar...

Pick any barometer of costs these days, and the story is the same: Prices are up - and in a dramatic fashion. The first thing that jumps out is the dismal performance of most asset classes during periods of low growth and high inflation - otherwise known as stagflation. A solid fo...

Emerging Markets are outperforming the rest of the world, due in large part to windfall profits in the commodities-exporting countries of South America and the Middle East. If you want to follow the money, this is a good place to start. Money has been flowing out of tech, consumer dis...

Larger companies have the advantage of scale, pricing power, greater ability to pass on higher costs to consumers, and stronger negotiating power with suppliers to name a few. Net profit will be an area looked at closely given the potential for multiple Fed rate hikes which will incre...

Canada sheds 200,000 jobs in January amid omicron wave. U.S. consumer prices rise at fastest rate in 40 years. Are brighter days ahead for U.S. small cap stocks? For further details see: Red-Hot: U.S. Inflation Surges At Blistering Pace

While US large caps have also struggled lately, they’ve fared far better than their smaller counterparts. Over the past year, much of the Russell 1000’s outperformance is attributable to its bigger exposures to technology and consumer discretionary industries. The sm...

There’s an important disconnect between stocks and bonds today. Specially, I am looking at two fundamental indicators for evaluating long-term interest rates. The first is the performance of small cap stocks relative to large caps. Typically, this ratio has moved in concert wit...