The Fed and Growth vs. Value

When it comes to financial markets, the Fed is the Boss. Why? They impact everything. Just look at the returns of growth vs. value stocks and the 10-year interest rate over the last 18 months.

While you may think I’m displaying the yield vs. price of bonds, the blue line is actually the different in the cumulative return of growth and value. You can see as rates dropped, growth soared relative to value. When rates started to climb the trend reversed.

Now rates have started to fall again and growth has picked up again.

Why is there this relation? It’s time value of money. Value companies have earnings now. Growth companies will have earnings in the future. As interest rates go down (up), future (current) earnings become more (less) valuable relatively speaking.

The question is: does the 10 year keep going down? We’ll get to that later in the week.

2 Fast 2 Furious?

The Housing and COVID Recessions had the same prescription: lots of fiscal and monetary stimulus. If the stock market results are similar, then it looks like the stock market may take a breather soon.

Here’s a comparison of the returns on the S&P 500 from the bottom of the housing recession and the bottom of the COVID recession.

You can see they tract nicely until the last month or so as the current market continues higher while the Housing recession recovery took a pause.

No two markets are the same, but this suggestions the second half of 2021 will not be as bullish for stocks as the first half.