This is an excerpt from an article published on Forbes this week.
We wrote a piece for Forbes this past September called, “Is Billionaire Ray Dalio Right About the U.S. Economy?” The gist of the article was whether Bridgewater’s founder was correct in his assessment that the U.S. economy was in the proverbial “seventh inning.”
Suffice to say, we agreed with Dalio’s assessment.
Later that month, during our “Quarterly Macro Themes” call—before the October selloff began—our CEO Keith McCullough explicitly warned our subscribers to “adopt a defensive posture” and beware of Momentum, High Beta and Growth style factors. Mr. Market confirmed our concerns, falling hard shortly thereafter. The question now is whether the stock market is also in the late innings of a record run.
Here’s a quick look at what our top two themes were heading into Q4.
In our September Forbes article, we cited some of the 200 data points that we follow as examples of economic data that appeared to be peaking. These included small business optimism hitting an all-time high, manufacturing indices hitting cycle highs, and consumer confidence hitting its highest level since the internet bubble back in 1999.
