Equities

Decades of Data: 1900–2019

As the current market environment continues to rapidly evolve, we remind investors that reviewing the history of business cycles, returns, and valuations can help provide a framework for understanding the market today. Our 2019 edition of Decades of Data presents historical analysis on economic indicators, equity, fixed income, and cash markets across eight geographies over the very long term.

Benefits of Global Diversification

Investors are now grappling with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has sent global equities into bear market territory as the threat of a severe recession weighs on the global economy. These are challenging, uncertain times for equity markets. As investors work to ensure their portfolios will be robust through this downturn and are positioned for the eventual rebound, we offer a review of the critical benefits of global equity diversification and examine considerations related to home bias, rebalancing strategies, and currency impacts.

VantagePoint: Is It Time to Overweight Equities?

In periods of market stress, it can be difficult to rebalance, much less overweight risky assets like equities. In this paper, we review our approach using multiple lenses: magnitude and duration of drawdowns relative to history, cheapness of valuations, and presence of pre-conditions for markets to begin their ascent. Such an approach can help investors tune out the emotion and dial in on the hard data and most probable outcomes even in the face of great uncertainty. While opportunities are developing across many markets, investors should hold off on broad overweights to risky assets at this time.