Market Sector Update: No Leadership, No Traction

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: Below is an update of a regular post here on Think B.I.G., looking at historical sector weightings of the S&P 500.

Dr. Oliver Schwindler, CAIA submits: Last week I presented the concept of equally-weighted risk contribution (ERC) portfolios and showed that this risk-based indexation methodology can deliver alpha compared to classical benchmarks like the S&P 500. I want to give readers a quick update on the recent performance.

As is well-known by everyone, the Fed monetizes the US deficit on a daily basis, thanks to the 45 minutes of POMO love each day when it buys Treasuries from Dealers. Of course, the Fed monetizes bonds from across the entire curve (mostly the longer end), which is why it is somewhat complicated to express the amount of risk transfer the Fed takes on every time the S&P posts an uptick as a result of yet another bond purchase by the hedge fund with the largest fixed income portfolio in the history of the world.

Housebuilder boosted by growth in completions, selling prices and operati

Article written by Prieur du Plessis, editor of the Investment Postcards from Cape Town blog.The update on U.S. sector PEs below comes courtesy of my friends at top-quality research house Bespoke.

Value Expectations submits: Earlier in the week we provided an update of the top performing companies within the S&P 500 index to identify which stocks have driven the returns of the market so far this year and also to see which companies have been a hindrance on the S&P 500’s returns. To help narrow the list further and identify the problem areas in the market, below is a sector breakout of performance within the S&P500.