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


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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Shades of Value: Navigating the Nuances of Value Index Differences

Shades of Value: Navigating the Nuances of Value Index Differences

In this update we review the results of the most recent Russell 1000 Large Cap Value annual Style Index rebalance that occurred on June 23rd. We also compare the exposures of the Russell 1000 Value index versus the S&P 500 Value index at 06/30/23 and consider the potential impact of factor and sector differences between the indexes on investors targeting large cap value exposure.

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Multi-Manager Platform: Q2 2023 Update: Navigating the Lopsided Impact of Generative A.I. in Global Markets

Multi-Manager Platform: Q2 2023 Update: Navigating the Lopsided Impact of Generative A.I. in Global Markets

In a paper entitled Generative AI – Hope, Hubris, or Harrowing, our CIO, Tina Byles Williams, explored the medium to long-term effects of Generative AI on the economy, financial markets, and broader society. The task for investment managers now lies in navigating this promising yet unpredictable future, particularly as the market has priced in substantial premiums for those perceived to be the primary beneficiaries of this emerging technology.

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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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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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