Quarterly Market Review – 4th Quarter 2019
Blue Water presents a market review of the 4th quarter of 2019. Short and long-term performance is graphically shown for US and international markets as well as large-caps and small caps and other various indices.
The 4th quarter of 2019 continued a strong year in the stock market. US stocks were up 9.1%, international developed stocks were up 7.9%, emerging markets were up 11.8% and global real estate was up 0.8%. Bond finished the quarter mixed with US bond squeaking out a 0.2% while global bonds were off by 1.1%.
Diving deeper into US stocks, which make up 55% of the world market capitalization, we see returns of:
Small Growth | 11.4% |
Large Growth | 10.6% |
Small Blend | 9.9% |
Total Market | 9.1% |
Large Blend | 9.0% |
Small Value | 8.5% |
Large Value | 7.4% |
Value underperformed growth in both large cap and small cap stocks. Small caps generally outperformed its large cap peer. Real estate was the worst performing asset class.
International developed stocks, which make up 33% of the world market capitalization, were outperformed by US stocks and emerging markets. Like in the US, value underperformed growth across both large cap and small cap stocks, and small caps outperformed large caps. Ireland had the largest gains with 16.5% and Belgium had the least gains with 3.0%.
Emerging markets make up the remaining 12% of world market capitalization. They generally outperformed both US and international developed markets. We again saw the trend of value underperforming growth, but here large caps outperformed small caps. Pakistan had the largest gains with 27.4% and Chile had the largest loss with -10.0%.
US real estate, which makes up 57% of the global real estate market, lost 1.2% while non-US real estate (43% of the global real estate market) gained 4.4%.
On the bond side, overall returns were very modest. US high yield bonds lead the way with a 2.6% return while long-term US government bonds had the worst return with a -4.1%.