The big things you need to know: First, we’ve just completed our quarterly survey of RBC’s equity analysts around the globe and found that optimism on performance persists for most sectors and coverage regions, despite the challenges associated with higher interest rates. Second, with a fresh set of survey results in hand we are making three changes to our sector recommendations. Within the US (and S&P 500 specifically) we are upgrading Materials to overweight, downgrading Health Care to market weight, and downgrading REITs to underweight.

The big things you need to know: First, investor sentiment has taken a bit of a hit, but it’s too early to say the pullback is over. Second, while we continue to expect the pullback to bottom out in the 5-10% range vs. recent highs, we’ve taken a look at S&P 500 performance around recent wars to gauge potential downside risks if we are wrong in that assumption. Third, it’s been a rough start to 1Q reporting season as companies beating consensus EPS forecasts have been underperforming significantly in terms of immediate price performance. Fourth, we’ve been surprised to see Large Cap Growth underperforming given the recent move up in 10-year yields, and run through the reasons (besides crowding and overvaluation) that we think this is happening.

The big things you need to know: First, geopolitical concerns are spiking at a time when stocks already seemed due for a pullback. Second, the rotation trade has just gotten a lot more complicated. Third, companies have been keeping expectations low on earnings. Fourth, our valuation modeling suggests some modest downside risk to the stock market if we don’t get cuts, and a more significant hit if we get more hikes. Fifth, Small Caps may be stuck in a holding pattern for a while. Sixth, Biden has closed the gap with Trump in betting markets. Seventh, US equity flows have fizzled.