"If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it."
— Mark Twain
For being one of the busiest weeks of the year (monetary policy decision by five DM central banks, large Treasury issuance, Q3 earnings and apparently a presidential election somewhere across the Atlantic) the first session of the week has been remarkably unexciting.
Stock markets closed marginally lower around the globe but on below average volumes and pretty equalized numbers in terms of advancers and decliners. The S&P 500’s heat map gives a good picture on how fragmented the session was:
With odds on who will became the 47th president of the United States in the 60th presidential election balancing out even further over the weekend, the “Trump Trade” saw some further unwinding.
E.g. most currencies showed small advances versus the US Dollar on Monday
and Treasury yields (Tens) were strongly off their Friday highs:
Back to equities, where after market close one of our focus list stocks, Palantir (PLTR), released earnings and gave a rosy revenue outlook, with the stock up 13% after hours.
Asian stocks are largely trading firmer this morning, with very decent advances in Japan (+1.1%) and China (+2.5%). Accordingly, index futures in Europe and the US are trading to flat to a tad higher.
And with that, it is US-Election Tuesday … GAME ON!
Torsten Slok from Apollo shared the following chart with his large readership community last week:
As usual, active manager, a breed on the brink of extinction, get a bashing and beating.
Let me make two observations:
I can all but guarantee you that 100% of passive funds will underperform their benchmark over 10 years (index tracking minus fees).
Good fund picking ‘skills’ will add alpha to your portfolio allocation and it seems we are doing something right. Only 2 (7%) out of 30 NPB focus list funds underperform their benchmark over a 5-year horizon (last column to the right - green indicates outperformance):
Interested to get more details on our picks covering all asset classes? Contact us to become a client ;-)
