Whitepaper: Navigating Required Minimum Distributions

Over the last three years, equity investors could sing “We Had It All” when it came to tailwinds for markets.  The combination of an uptrend in earnings growth forecasts and a downtrend in 2 Year Treasury yields was incredibly powerful for risk asset returns.

Looking at these two components, the uptrend in earnings growth forecasts supported risk appetite, and thus valuations, while rising estimates also boosted total equity market returns as earnings growth consistently surprised to the upside.

The U.S. equity market’s long-term resilience is no accident. Domestic firms benefit from operating in the world’s most dynamic economy and represent a wide range of industries. This has helped companies generate reliably strong earnings growth across seasons and cycles, and it has created internal market diversification in periods of sharp rotations (when many country indexes driven by just one or two industries often falter).

U.S. stocks are holding up as conflict escalates in Iran, but rising oil prices and weakening consumers could change that fast. Here’s what investors need to watch.

Occasionally, instead of being optimistic about the future, equity markets become thoroughly “freaked out” by the future (singing along to “The Future Freaks Me Out” with those slightly neurotic synth-punk-emo purveyors, Motion City Soundtrack).