by Nathan White, CIO
Preparing for the Post-Election Fiscal Reality
As the election approaches, debates over economic policy, tax reforms, and government spending are in full swing. Each party promises distinct solutions, but regardless of who wins, one thing is certain: the U.S. will continue to face massive structural budget deficits for years to come. The economic recovery from the pandemic, combined with ongoing commitments to entitlement programs, infrastructure, and defense spending, ensures that managing these deficits will be a long-term challenge.
This fiscal environment has serious implications for bond markets, stock markets, interest rates, and individual investors. It’s essential to understand how these forces may impact your investments and how to protect against potential risks.
The Persistent Deficit Problem
The U.S. budget deficit soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by stimulus spending and increased healthcare costs. Although the immediate crisis has passed, long-term fiscal imbalances remain. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are growing as the population ages, and defense spending remains high. Both parties are hesitant to raise taxes significantly, as doing so could hinder economic growth.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the deficit could surpass $2 trillion annually by 2030. Regardless of political outcomes, the government will face rising deficits that will require financing.
Ramifications for the Markets
Financing these deficits will likely lead to increased government bond issuance. The law of supply and demand suggests that more bonds could drive down prices and push yields higher. Rising yields create challenges for fixed-income investors, as higher interest rates reduce the value of existing bond holdings.
Additionally, as government debt continues to grow, concerns about the U.S. government’s ability to manage debt payments in a higher interest rate environment could diminish demand for Treasuries, leading to even higher borrowing costs.
Though less directly tied to fiscal policy, the stock market could still feel the effects of rising deficits. Higher government borrowing can crowd out private investment, limiting access to capital for businesses and potentially slowing economic growth. Additionally, rising interest rates increase corporate borrowing costs, squeezing profit margins, especially for growth stocks.
On the other hand, some sectors may benefit from higher rates. Financial companies, particularly banks, could thrive, while defensive sectors like utilities may be less affected due to stable demand.
Ramifications for Individuals and Investors
Rising deficits and higher interest rates could make mortgages and variable-rate loans more expensive, tightening household budgets. Retirees may also face challenges as traditional 60/40 portfolios may offer less protection in a rising-rate environment, requiring a reevaluation of asset allocation. Investors can mitigate these risks through diversification, focusing on income-generating assets, and seeking protection against rising rates. With disciplined planning, it’s possible to achieve financial goals even in the face of persistent deficits and rising borrowing costs.
Model Portfolio Performance and Positioning
After a choppy start, stocks and bonds both rallied to end the quarter. The anticipation of and then a delivery by the Fed of a half percentage point reduction in interest rates was the main catalyst. The Fed is now officially on a path to reducing interest rates if inflation data continues to corroborate their narrative. The economy and labor markets are slowing but have not entered recession levels. As usual there are many geo-political and economic risks that could cause trouble, and we are monitoring them closely. Our conservative and fixed-income allocations have done well for the year while our overall equity allocations’ performance was mixed due to our overweight to value stocks which have underperformed compared to the mega cap growth stocks.
The Managed Income model was up about 4.4% for the quarter and nearly 6% for the year. The allocation remains extremely conservative to minimize volatility and reduce risk. This is better for the year than long-term Treasury bonds (2.4%) and the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index (4.45%). As mentioned previously, interest rates fell causing bond prices to increase. The Fed is anticipating about two more quarter point reductions for this year and around one percent for 2025. The spread between safe securities and corporate and/or high yield fixed income remains narrow, making the latter less attractive. The market is pricing many of these bonds as if very little risk exists. In my estimation that is the time to be cautious. Managed Income will remain focused on protecting capital and will primarily only add risk when conditions get extreme (i.e., recessions).
Within our equity and growth strategies, the Liquidity Factor Strategy was up 13.5% for the quarter and up 20% for the year. This was the best performing of our subset strategies. This strategy uses a proprietary method to take advantage of pricing anomalies in stocks that are less liquid and relatively ignored by the market. The strategy is comprised of ten holdings that see little turnover. There were two holding changes for the quarter by adding Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (Biotechnology) and Tyler Technologies (Software). The primary exposures remain in the Consumer Discretionary and Healthcare sectors. The Relative Strength ETF component was up about 4% for the quarter. The strategy is now allocated Small Caps and after an extraordinarily long while, Emerging Markets.
Fundamental 20 was up 6.6% for the quarter and is up 13.4% for the year. It was the top performing segment to start the year but then lagged as energy and other value sectors fell behind the “Mag 7” mania. This strategy focuses on highly profitable companies that have excellent value compared to their cash flows and/or net income. We look for companies that are using their capital efficiently to make money. For a strategy that normally has little turnover, this quarter had significant changes in October. We added twelve new names to the strategy: Axis Capital Holdings (Insurance), Exelixis (Biotechnology), First Solar (Semiconductors and Equipment), Gap (Specialty Retail), Hess Corp (Oil, Gas and Consumable Fuels), Meta Platforms (Interactive Media & Services), Merck & Co (Pharmaceuticals), Progressive Corp (Insurance), Pilgrim’s Pride Corp (Food Products), Royalty Pharma PLC (Pharmaceuticals), The Travelers Companies (Insurance) and Valero (Oil, Gas and Consumable Fuels).
The Fast Movers strategy was down 3.84% for the quarter and up 10.3% for the year. This is our most aggressive strategy that actively seeks high growth and therefore can experience regular large drawdowns. The strategy is now allocated to mostly technology and communication services positions. Many of the high momentum stocks experienced extremely choppy performance for the quarter, which is not conducive to the strategy. The strategy now holds six technology, two healthcare, two energy, and one utility, industrial and consumer discretionary position each. We added a position in Diamondback Energy (Oil, Gas and Consumable Fuels), Baker Hughes (Energy Equipment and Services), Astrazeneca (Pharmaceuticals), Cintas (Commercial Services and Supplies), KLA Corp (Semiconductors & Equipment) and increased our holdings of Advance Micro Devices (Semiconductors). The top holdings for Fast Movers continue to be NVIDA, Constellation Energy, and Micron Technology.
The Top Flight Model Portfolio was up 4.79% for the quarter and 12.39% for the year. By way of comparison, this is better than half of our relevant benchmarks for the year: S&P 500 (+22.1%), Small Caps (+11.2%), Dow Jones Industrials (+12.3) and the NASDAQ (+21.2%). Top Flight continues to be comprised of 25% Fast Movers, 40% Fundamental 20, 20% Liquidity Factor, and 15% ETF RS. Among our overall equity holdings, the top five performers for the first quarter were Scotts Miracle Gro (+37%), DoorDash (+32%), Constellation Energy Group (+30%), NVR (+29%), and Fortinet (+29%). The worst performers were a mixed group Moderna (-43%), Crowdstrike (-21%), Micron (-20%), Medpace Holdings (-19%) and Cleveland-Cliffs (-16%).