EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Since 1998, the US Stock Market has been stuck in a broad trading range, yielding either flat or negative returns for the “buy and hold” community of investors. This first “lost decade” may turn into a very long and painful period when equities do not provide the expected returns to investors.
Following last year’s market breakdown, in our opinion, today’s economic outlook is not conducive to sustain a strong bull trend. As a matter of fact, the stock market’s technical picture (see page 5) and fundamental analysis (see page 6), point to a stagnation of the market in a broad range around 1000 for the S&P and 10 000 for the Dow Jones.
We can find several examples in recent history, (see page 9) when markets were stuck in a flat/down range for decades, seriously putting into question the “mantra” of buy and hold (see page 11).
So what should an investor do? It is our view that the solution is to diversify one’s portfolio into Managed Futures (see page 15). Studies have shown that Managed Futures have the potential to lower overall portfolio risk, while at the same time provide an opportunity to enhance overall portfolio returns.(see page 12).

Sylvain Bergfeld
Chief Executive Officer, Alterama, Inc.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS

Download the newsletter in pdf version