Gavekal Capital: 2013-12-22

Monday, December 23, 2013

Is 2% Growth The New Normal For Consumption?

From 1960 to November 2007 (the 2007-2009 recession started December 2007 according to NBER), real personal consumption expenditures grew at just about 3.5% trend growth. In this recovery, consumption as only mustered a growth rate just above 2%. Is this another permanent downshift in consumption growth or will consumption ratchet back up? Something we will be keeping an eye on.

Last Week's Returns Had "Risk-On" Characteristics

Last week, the two factors with the highest R-squared to the market were correlation with the Yen and beta. Interestingly, there has been a very clear relationship when looking at stocks with high or low correlation with the Yen over the past year. The stocks with the highest correlation have performed much worse than the stocks with the lowest correlation. This, however, has not been the case when you are dissecting returns based on beta. There hasn't been much of a pattern that you can clearly identify over the past year.

About Gavekal Capital

Gavekal Capital is a US registered investment advisory firm that manages the Gavekal Knowledge Leaders Strategy. Knowledge Leaders are a group of the world’s leading innovators with deep reservoirs of intangible capital. These companies often possess competitive advantages such as strong brand, proprietary knowledge or a unique distribution mechanism. Knowledge Leaders are largely service-based and advanced manufacturing businesses, often operating globally. Gavekal Capital seeks to identify the world’s leading knowledge companies through a proprietary process that analyzes corporate knowledge investments.
We offer the Gavekal Knowledge Leaders Strategy in multiple products for global investors. For more information about our product offerings please visit http://www.gavekalcapital.com.
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