On Balance
This month’s weather report is more of a weather alert as markets enter a “Chaos phase”. What we can see is where we have entered the current period of market turbulence from – those are our initial starting conditions. As for the outlook ahead? We have no visibility right now but we must go forward anyway…
As global equity markets look ahead to the coming year, we summarise the year that has gone and look forward to the New Horizons of 2026 through the lens of Apollo.
Catfish season… We call our regular Apollo based commentary “The Weather report”. The analogies that we can make with the multiple elements of Value, Momentum and Uncertainty impacting markets in a continuous way chimes nicely with the idea of Currents, Tides and Winds, all impacting the navigation of the high seas. Whatever the nature of the vessel […]
One reason that we call this report “The Weather report” is that the analogies with multiple elements of Value, Momentum and Uncertainty impacting markets in a continuous way chimes with the idea of Currents, Tides and Winds, all impacting the navigation of the high seas. Whatever the nature of the vessel concerned or the skills, experience […]
Talk about about a change of heart! Mention the word AI and certain stocks come to mind, but few more so than hashtag#MSFT. It’s well known that investor attitudes to AI story have changed – it’s gone from buy everything associated with AI due to the exponential growth potential to focus on extraordinary Capex and […]
As equity investor concerns increase over lower beta return expectations from the market portfolio, increased levels of correlations between fixed income and equities and ever higher levels of benchmark concentration, the focus shifts to portfolio construction. By extending our existing Smart Alpha framework we have developed a set of positively convex, all equity portfolios that simultaneously magnify upside returns and hedge downside risks – providing a best-of-all worlds solution to equity risk and return.
In dark times, you need a friend. I was asked this morning politely what I thought of markets, given I’ve been around a long time. Pride aside, it’s actually true. From Black Monday (Oct 1987) to the Gulf War (1990–91), the 1994 bond shock, the Asian Financial Crisis and LTCM (1997–98), the dot‑com bust (2000–02), […]
Last week I shared the Apollo “Margin of Safety” chart on Pepsi (see articles) and noted how it, specifically and Consumer Staples as a sector (AKA “HALOS” – an acronym I heard coined by Joshua Brown in a recent and excellent podcast) are trading at a historically large premium to Value. That premium reflects risk […]
I don’t start the day wondering what to write the topic finds me. Every morning brings news, earnings, or rumour that creates an explosion of volatility: fact and supposition collide and markets move. The art of investing has changed. Today, success demands an additional, essential skill: recognising risk and opportunity in real time and then […]
At the start of last year I wrote a piece with the same title. Coming into 2025, many investors assumed 2024’s winners would stay winners. Then a surprise policy shock broad reciprocal tariffs announced by the White House sent markets into a tailspin. The cockpit went dark: prices became hypersensitive to headlines, speculation and narrative. […]
I wrote a piece the other day ‘What, when and why? The portfolio manager’s dilemma’ in which I said that I don’t start the day knowing what I am going to write. Opportunity just knocks. Whether you are an analyst or portfolio manager, you need to know when share prices are offering opportunity or risk […]
Entering into February, we take a look back at the weather report for January 2026 and take a view on what might lie ahead in H1.