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


Alpine Snowball: Q2 2023 Market Outlook

Alpine Snowball: Q2 2023 Market Outlook

The graveyard of once legendary business franchises has just added one more new member to its ignominious fraternity. The hastily arranged acquisition of Credit Suisse by its chief Swiss rival UBS in March 2023, ended the 166-year run of the global symbol of Swiss banking largesse. Credit Suisse was once the 15th largest bank in the world with offices in 50 countries and assets of over $1 trillion USD.

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S&P 500 Catholic Values Strategy

S&P 500 Catholic Values Strategy Q1 2022 | March 31, 2022Annualized Returns (%)  QTDYTD1 Year3 Years5 Years 7 Years10 YearsSince Inception1 Gross of fees-------3.28 Net of fees-------3.27 Benchmark2-------3.71 1 Inception Date: February 28, 2022 2 Benchmark: S&P 500...

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2020 Outlook for Emerging and Frontier Markets

2020 Outlook for Emerging and Frontier Markets

While the U.S. continued its decade-long run, surging ahead another +31% in 2019 to lead all major developed markets (except Switzerland, +32.5%), three emerging markets did even better last year. Taiwan gained +36% as investors reevaluated the “moat” of its market champion, …

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Q4 2019 Market Outlook

Q4 2019 Market Outlook

In the third quarter, both of the leading anglo-liberal democracies lurched towards the political abyss and even potential constitutional crises, while global growth continued to decelerate on the back of trade policy …

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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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