North American Equity Strategy Review
How about those Raptors!? I have to admit I am more of a Leaf fan but I definitely got on the Raptor bandwagon; after all, how often do you win an NBA championship? The S&P500 also seemed to have a bit of a bandwagon feel midway through the second quarter. After a positive move in April, the S&P500 lost, in US$ terms, almost 7% in May as trade talks were derailed and President Trump tweeted that he would raise tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200 billion worth of goods and potentially introduce tariffs on an additional $300 billion. Then there was the attempt to use tariffs as a weapon against Mexico to reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens crossing into the US. That was resolved quickly, but it was enough to kill the positive market sentiment from April and to send the market lower. Exhibit 1 shows the Ned Davis Short Term Sentiment Indicator. Optimism rose to 78% bullish (positive on the stock market) on April 29th, 2019 after which the stock market corrected sharply before bottoming at 16% bullish on June 3rd, 2019. We did not get on this selling bandwagon and stayed nearly fully invested. In June, the market recovered all that was lost in the previous month.