Research and Commentary

FIS Group Archive | A Clear Perspective

About Global Market Outlook Reports

About Global Market Outlook Reports

Our CIO, Tina Byles Williams, publishes our market outlook on a quarterly basis, based on research that examines market conditions over a three- to six-month period. These quarterly analyses serve as key inputs to our fund construction process, which incorporates strategic tilts to the market segments we believe will outperform over a six- to 12-month time frame. For global equity portfolios, these tilts incorporate regional, sector, and capitalization strata as well as investment process and style factors. For U.S. equity portfolios, tilts include sector, capitalization strata, investment process, and/or style factors.

Our objective is to construct a portfolio of “best in class” investments with weightings consistent with our overall investment strategy.

FIS Group Global Market Outlook Reports


Xponance Diverse & Emerging Manager CEO Roundtable

Xponance Diverse & Emerging Manager CEO Roundtable

In December 2023 Tina Byles Williams, Founder, CEO and CIO of Xponance, hosted 24 CEOs from among the firm’s currently funded sub-advisors to participate in a roundtable discussion on the most pertinent challenges to emerging and diverse investment management companies.

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Too Good to Be True: The Failure of Defensive Managers During Recent Inflationary Shocks

Too Good to Be True: The Failure of Defensive Managers During Recent Inflationary Shocks

The failure of the returns-based approach, along with some interesting dynamics observed in factor contributions, opens an extremely interesting avenue for future analysis. What role did the macroeconomic regime (inflation, top line growth, and interest rates) play in the “defensiveness” of strategies, and what can be done to avoid misclassifying strategies during sharp regime changes?

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U.S. Fixed Income: Q4 2023 Update

U.S. Fixed Income: Q4 2023 Update

The 4th quarter Treasury and spread rally rescued the broad fixed income market from another year of negative or barely positive (depending on sector) returns. In traditional bond market fashion, however, we find much to worry about with stretched valuations in most of the spread sectors and an uncertain path forward for the economy and interest rates.

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Systematic Global Equities: Q4 2023 Update

Systematic Global Equities: Q4 2023 Update

As 2023 drew to a close, the financial markets began to manifest the early signs of a soft-landing scenario, marked by a robust rally in equity markets in the fourth quarter, showcasing double-digit gains. This period was characterized by broadening of market strength, with notable outperformance by small-cap stocks, heavily shorted names, lower-quality companies, unprofitable tech, and a mix of long-duration, meme, cyclical, and value stocks.

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Time for a New China Strategy? The Case for Decoupling Asset Allocation in Chinese Risk Assets: Q3 2023 Market Outlook

Time for a New China Strategy? The Case for Decoupling Asset Allocation in Chinese Risk Assets: Q3 2023 Market Outlook

Already responsible for an estimated $5 billion in stimulative consumer spending – the equivalent of the entire annual earnings of Starbucks, American Airlines, or FedEx – the Taylor Swift ‘Eras’ Tour is doing more than its part to save the global economy. However, the economic phenomenon being dubbed ‘Swiftonomics’ will forsake China, as the pop legend’s tour plays four dates in Japan and a record six dates in Singapore, but not in the world’s second largest economy.

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Market Insights Alert

Papers: FIS Group Proprietary Research


The Sweet Spot in the US Equity Markets – Part 3

The Sweet Spot in the US Equity Markets – Part 3

In the last post in this series, we update and expand on our analysis to explore the impact of rising and falling interest rates on the performance of various capitalization tranches. Finally, we now look at the performance of the “Sweet Spot” in different interest rate regimes.

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Microbes, Markets, and the Dragon

Microbes, Markets, and the Dragon

The coronavirus outbreak in China, named COVID-19 by WHO, is understandably dominating news coverage and depressing Chinese risk plays. Since 12/9/2019 when the first coronavirus case was announced from the City of Wuhan, confirmed cases have risen rapidly to over 40,000 as of this report.

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The Sweet Spot in the US Equity Markets – Part 2

The Sweet Spot in the US Equity Markets – Part 2

In our previous post, we sought to identify and quantify the investment opportunity or edge within various market capitalization segments.  We found that the top 1000 names in the Russell 2500 benchmark constitute a sweet spot across the entire Russell 3000. 

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Impacts of a Rejuvenating Workforce

Impacts of a Rejuvenating Workforce

As the secular bull market in long term treasury bonds approaches its 40th year, the consensus around falling interest rates has morphed from a shared opinion to an accepted reality.  Reputations and fortunes have been made and lost by adherents and skeptics respectively. 

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Videos And Webinars

Market Outlook and Research Webinars


Video | Reality “Trumps” the Reflation Trade

Video and Webinar | Outlook Our Q2 Market Outlook evaluates the recent retreat in risk assets, trends in global equities, the impact of a strong U.S. dollar, and continued political uncertainty under the Trump Administration. Key points include: Policy expectations...

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Video | Big Winners in the Neglected Frontier Universe

Video And Webinar | Outlook Our 2017 outlook for frontier markets, "Big Winners in the Neglected Frontier Universe", concludes that frontier markets remain attractively priced, with much lower valuations, relative to developed markets. "We remain bullish on Argentina,...

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