CIO Overview And Outlook - Q4 2021
0CIO Overview And Outlook - Q4 2021 A remarkable stock market in a remarkable year closes 2021 with a remarkable quarter. Our quant work gave a rare three times signal of extreme fear. Our other equity strategies began buying at the end of the Thanksgiving period selloff, and then followed the quant signals. Market fear was evidenced around Thanksgiving week because of the uncertainty about the Federal Reserve’s policy, uncertainty surrounding the Omicron COVID variant, uncertainty about a debt ceiling political default risk, uncertainty about geopolitical threats in Eastern Europe, and uncertainty about financial contagion from the Chinese real estate enterprises defaulting on their debt. As Q4 and 2021 close the calendar, these uncertainties are being replaced with outcomes and forecasts; hence, we remain fully invested and expect higher stock prices to be achieved in 2022 as higher earnings continue to propel the US stock markets to new levels. Markets expect two or three Fed hikes of the policy interest rate starting in the middle of 2022.