Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q4 2022 Commentary Q4 2022 began with a bear market rally that continued into November but waned in December. Rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and Chairman Powell’s comments that it was too soon to consider a pause tested investors’ resolve. November’s mid-term election delivered the ingredients for gridlock in Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q2 2022 Commentary More information including since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Stocks were sharply lower during the second quarter of 2022, as persistently high inflation and the response from the Federal Reserve sparked worries over the severity of a resulting economic slowdown and Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q1 2022 Commentary More information including since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Ballast concluded its commentary last quarter with a list of “known risks” that included a continuation of inflation, the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle and trajectory, and the fact that attention paid by investors Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC February 25, 2022 More information including since-inception performance for each Ballast strategy may be found at www.ballastequity.com. War Markets have been bracing for conflict between Russia and Ukraine for much of 2022 and, on Thursday, this conflict became a reality. President Vladimir Putin has stated that Ukraine “is an inalienable part Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q4 2021 Commentary More information including a since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Equity markets marched higher in the quarter, with returns in large capitalization indexes outpacing those of small cap indexes. Businesses and investors faced numerous challenges – research firm Sentieo cited “supply Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q3 2021 Commentary More information including a since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. As we noted in our outlook last quarter, U.S. equity markets delivered between one and two years of expected returns in just the first six months of 2021. Equity markets pushed Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q2 2021 Commentary More information including a since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Further reopening of the U.S. economy fueled robust economic growth and rising markets during the quarter. In just five memorable quarters, we have gone from a severe economic contraction and uncertainty to Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q1 2021 Commentary More information including since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Vaccines and stimulus provided a double-barreled boost to equity markets in the quarter, with particularly sharp gains in lower quality, more economically sensitive stocks. These sharp gains produced significant headwinds for the quality-biased Read more ➝
Stonks, Stocks, Traders and Owners February 2021 If you owned two businesses, one profitable and growing and the other chronically losing money and languishing, to which would you allocate additional resources? Business owners are tasked with making successful capital allocation decisions that will propel their companies forward for the long-term benefit of their shareholders, their Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q4 2020 Commentary More information including since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. 2020: A Long Strange Trip Investors who decided to ignore the news, leave their brokerage statements unopened and simply view the results of the full twelve months of 2020 would be both pleased Read more ➝
To borrow heavily from Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, what a long, strange trip 2020 has been. After beginning the year with great expectations (remember images like the one below?) and with the strong market returns of 2019 vivid in the minds of investors, the world faced the reality of a Read more ➝
Ballast Equity Management, LLC Q3 2020 Commentary Additional information and since-inception performance for each of the Ballast strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Ballast Strategy Performance Market participants experienced two sharply different environments during the quarter with U.S. equities marching higher propelled by stimulus fuel in July and August while renewed investor concerns, market volatility, Read more ➝
Investors’ Choice: Crowded House or Prudent Distancing? September 2020 Despite the recent volatility in large cap U.S. stocks, performance leadership has been driven by the top ten contributors in the S&P 500 more greatly than any other period in the past ten years. Shares of large technology companies continued to march higher in August, causing Read more ➝
Ballast is proud to note that its Quality Value Smallcap Strategy has attained a three-year track record as of June 30, 2020 with performance that outpaced both relevant indexes. Additional information and since-inception performance for each of the strategies may be found at www.ballastequity.com. Ballast Strategy Performance Investors apparently listened when, in late March, Federal Read more ➝
Ballast Strategy Performance After a positive start in 2020, markets experienced a long-awaited correction during March. Each correction in history is different, but this time is quite unlike the last, the financial crisis of 2008, due to its combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, Saudi/Russia oil trade wars, supply and demand shocks and the swift Read more ➝
The long running bull market was punctuated by a sharp correction in major U.S. markets last week, with uncertainty caused by the increasing spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. As often happens in such corrections, investors appeared to broadly sell risk assets in the early days followed by a more discriminate selling that hit stocks Read more ➝
Stocks and other risk assets rallied into the year-end, aided by the Federal Reserve’s third cut in interest rates, diminished trade war fears, strong labor markets and resilient consumers. The rally lifted stocks broadly, and particularly lifted those of lower-quality, less profitable and more leveraged businesses, producing headwinds for the quality-biased Ballast strategies. 2019 began Read more ➝
The quarter ending September 30 saw modest returns in U.S. mid-cap stocks while returns of small cap indexes were slightly negative. The quarter included a brief, yet sharp, period in September where value stocks outperformed their growth counterparts, leading many to wonder whether the long-awaited leadership of value stocks might be at hand. We remain in Read more ➝
Following the wild gyrations of the equity markets in late 2018 and first quarter of 2019, returns were more modest during the quarter ending June 30, 2019. Each of the Ballast Equity Management strategies exceeded its primary and secondary indexes during the quarter and we are pleased to note that the BEM Quality Value Midcap Read more ➝
Jeff Kautz and Randy Hughes co-founded Ballast Equity Management in 2016. More important to their clients may be the fact that they have invested together for over twenty years. Previously, the two worked together at Perkins Investment Management, a subsidiary of Janus Henderson Group, where Jeff held roles including Portfolio Manager, CEO and Chief Investment Read more ➝
Market Overview U.S. equity returns rebounded sharply in the first quarter of 2019. Growth stocks outperformed value stocks and smaller companies generally outperformed the stocks of large-cap companies. Within every equity style and size, low-quality stocks, as ranked by Standard & Poor’s Quality Rankings, sharply outperformed high-quality stocks. An important step in the Ballast Equity Read more ➝