There has been much focus on the recent weak market breadth in US equities driven primarily by mega-caps stocks. There are several ways to calculate market breadth, but the objective is the same and that is to understand whether there is broad participation in the underlying index movement. If an index is rising and most of the underlying stocks are also up, then this indicates a broad healthy market condition... 

The debate on passive versus active management has been ongoing for multiple decades since the first index investment trust was introduced in the 1970s. While passive investing is here to stay, we believe that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of passive and we see active management regaining some lost ground, especially in the current environment of higher interest rates, higher inflation and macro uncertainty... 

The past decade was marked by the dominance of US mega cap stocks with the S&P500 rising more than 360% by the end of 2021. However, going into 2023, we have seen a reversal, with the MSCI World ex US index performing better. Could this outperformance hold up in 2023 and could international Developed Market equities close some of the long-term performance gap... 

In the past, rising US interest rates and a stronger US dollar would have meant trouble for Emerging Markets. As tighter financial conditions lead to a broad global slowdown, countries that have borrowed in US dollars would face heavy debt burdens, and a fall in risk appetite would cause investors to flee Emerging Markets...