Perspectives Newsletter: Q2, 2020
A painful bear market in the first quarter was met with an equally impressive rally in the second. Never before has a bear market brought on by a recession lasted only four weeks, though no bear market had ever been met with such a forceful response from policy makers around the world. If the Federal Reserve responded to the 2008 crisis with a bazooka, Chairman Powell unleashed a howitzer as the Fed grew its balance sheet to $7 trillion at the end of the quarter from just $4 trillion at the start of the year. Domestically, the one constant was the outperformance of growth compared to value. Small and mid-cap stocks outperformed their larger peers, though still lagged meaningfully for the year. In a further sign that the risk rally was truly on in the second quarter, Emerging Markets led all major groups higher in June as the global economy slowly reopened. Export and commodity-sensitive markets were especially impressive, highlighted by China with a positive year-to-date return of +1.2%—the only country in the green.
