Hear the team’s insights into the economy, key policy trends, and market dynamics as they explored upcoming challenges and opportunities.
Market Insights
2025 Outlook: Great Expectations
One of the many incisive lessons from Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations is how quickly a new environment can alter our perceptions and make us forget from where we came.
Just like young Pip who forgets his humble roots and comes to demand great things from his London high society life, only to be disappointed, today’s investors and forecasters have become accustomed to a high return, low volatility, upside-surprise-driven macro and market environment.
Labor Market Showing Its Flair
Fed rate cuts appear to be on hold. Global government bond markets are in retreat. And stocks have been jittery in the opening days of 2025. The trend for each of these hinges, to varying extents, on whether the U.S. job creating machine can continue humming in 2025. The December U.S. employment report gave us hope that it can.
Navigating the Divide: Active vs. Passive Strategies in Today’s Equity Markets
As equity market indices have delivered remarkably high and steady returns, investment strategies tied to those indexes can play a more important role in portfolios. So-called passive investing has become a $13 trillion powerhouse, transforming the financial landscape. But its rapid ascent has broader implications for market dynamics.
What Year Is It?
The investing world has awoken from a two-week holiday slumber, and a new year has begun. 2025 starts, as most years do, with more questions than answers. But the outcome for the global economy and financial markets seems unusually uncertain to us. High valuations and market concentration combined with softening economic data and rising policy uncertainty mean the picture is murky, at best.
Follow You Down
Currently, there is a splintering in financial markets and economic data that is likely to prove temporary, but as this splintering mends, markets could be singing Gin Blossoms’ “Follow You Down” along the way.
Nowadays
But oh, it's heavenNowadays “Nowadays”, Roxie Hart, Chicago the Musical It’s good, isn’t it? “Let me start by saying that we think the economy is in a really good place, and we think policy is in a really good place.” Grand, isn't it? “The economy is strong overall...
Maybe This Time
In the grand ranking of defeated and desperate pleas for love and acceptance, Fräulein Sally Bowles’ haunting “Maybe This Time” at the end of the first act of Cabaret takes the cake. In a close second comes Value stocks in 2024. Defeated, desperate, unloved, unaccepted, the Value factor/style might as well apply to jobs in the chorus line at the Kit Kat Club.
Watch the Replay: 2025 Outlook Preview
In true NewEdge fashion, our 2025 Outlook Preview is presented as a “songbook”, inspired by songs from a broad swath of genres. In addition to the link to the charts below, we have also shared a video where Chief Investment Officer Cameron Dawson walks through the deck.
The Show Must Go On
Our last Weekly Edge addressed the potential that we could see improving economic data in the wake of the U.S. election, reflected by more optimistic consumer and business survey responses. Since then, we’ve seen that effect materialize in some places (consumer expectations) but not others (services business sentiment).