Current Perspectives
The 2025 Outlook: A Year of Political and Policy Change (December 20, 2024)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA, Bill O’Grady, Thomas Wash, Daniel Ortwerth, and Mark Keller, CFA Summary of Expectations | PDF The Economy Economic Growth We expect the US economy to keep growing throughout 2025, with no recession. However, current growth is only moderate, and because of elevated real interest rates and cooling labor demand, growth could… Read More »
The 2024 Outlook: Slow-Bicycle Economy (December 18, 2023)
by Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA, Thomas Wash, Bill O’Grady, and Mark Keller, CFA Summary of Expectations | PDF The Economy Economic Growth We expect the U.S. economy to continue growing into 2024, but its momentum has been slowing, and slowing momentum will put the economy at increased risk of recession. As the growth rate continues to… Read More »
The Case for Hard Assets: An Update (June 2023)
by Bill O’Grady & Mark Keller | PDF Background and Summary Secular markets are defined as long-term trends in an asset. There are both secular bear and bull markets. In most markets, there are also cyclical bull and bear markets, often tied to the business cycle, and in some markets, there are seasonal bull and… Read More »
2023 Outlook: A Recession Year (December 21, 2022)
by Mark Keller, CFA, Bill O’Grady, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF Summary of Expectations: A recession is highly probable in 2023. Our base case is a garden-variety recession. Three factors could trigger a deep recession: a. Falling nominal home prices; b. A financial crisis; c. A geopolitical event One factor that could mitigate the downturn… Read More »
2022 Outlook: Update #2 – The Tails Become Fatter (July 12, 2022)
by Bill O’Grady, Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA, and Mark Keller, CFA | PDF In our 2022 Outlook: The Year of Fat Tails, we outlined a forecast with a higher likelihood of events outside the norm. To compensate for the unusual level of uncertainty, we promised to provide frequent updates to the forecast. This report is the… Read More »
2022 Outlook: Update #1 (February 18, 2022)
by Mark Keller, CFA, Bill O’Grady, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF In our 2022 Outlook: The Year of Fat Tails, we outlined a forecast with a higher likelihood of events outside the norm. To compensate for the unusual level of uncertainty, we promised to provide frequent updates to the forecast. This report is the… Read More »
2022 Outlook: The Year of Fat Tails (December 16, 2021)
by Mark Keller, CFA, Bill O’Grady, and Patrick Fearon-Hernandez, CFA | PDF Summary: We don’t expect a recession in 2022. Real GDP growth will range between 3.0% to 3.5%. Inflation remains elevated, though price pressures will likely subside in H2 2022. We expect the core PCE deflator, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, to… Read More »
2021 Outlook: The Recovery Year (December 14, 2020)
by Bill O’Grady & Mark Keller | PDF Summary: The economy is in recovery, but the expansion phase of the cycle (where economic output exceeds its prior peak) isn’t likely to begin until 2022. We look for weak first quarter growth followed by more notable strength for the remaining three quarters as the COVID-19 vaccines… Read More »
The Case for Small Caps (December 7, 2020)
by Bill O’Grady, Mark Keller, and Dan Winter | PDF To measure market capitalization, we use the Wilshire Large Cap and Wilshire Small Cap indices. The following chart shows the log-transformed ratio. On this chart, a rising number indicates stronger large caps relative to small caps. In general, small caps tend to outperform coming out… Read More »