In January of this year, we looked at the relative performance of the United States versus the rest of the world (ROW). At the time, ROW was making up lost ground relative to the US, but that didn’t last long. Through the first three quarters of 2021, the US (SPDR S&P 500 ETF-SPY) picked up steam once again and has significantly outpaced both the rest of the world (Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF- VEU) and emerging markets (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF- EEM). Emerging markets have been the underperformers of the group while the US has led. Although EEM outperformed at the beginning of 2021, the index has since moved lower while the US trudged higher right up through early September. YTD through the end of Q3, SPY has outperformed EEM by 19.5 percentage points, which ranks as the second-widest spread between the two ETFs since EEM started trading in 2004. While not to the same degree, the US has also notably outperformed the rest of the world as well with a performance gap of 12.4 percentage points.

Over the last 17 years, Q4 performance has been mixed after the performance spread between SPY and EEM during the first three quarters of the year was in the double digits. Since 2004, there have been five prior occurrences, and in three of those years, SPY continued to outperform in Q4 while it lagged twice. Over the last decade, EEM has only outperformed SPY two times through the end of Q3 (2016 and 2017), and this year is the fourth in a row where SPY outperformed EEM.

Similar to EEM, SPY has also steadily outperformed VEU in the first three quarters of the year with outperformance in 11 of the last 14 years. Interestingly, in the three years where SPY lagged VEU, it outperformed in Q4 all three times. Like this year, SPY outperformed VEU by double-digit percentages in the first three quarters of the year only three other times since 2008. The last two times there was a positive double-digit spread (2018 and 2020), VEU outperformed for the remainder of the year.

Investors often look to play trends in the first three quarters of the year for a continuation through Q4 or a reversion to the mean.  However, in terms of big performance gaps between US stocks and both international and emerging markets in the first three quarters of the year, like the analysis we highlighted last week with sectors, historically there’s been no discernible trend of either a continuation or reversal of that trend in Q4. Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read over the past week. The links are mostly market related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.

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Florida

Cathie Wood’s ARK Departs NYC With Shift to Florida Office by

The team behind ARK Invest has closed its New York City office and moved its headquarters and operations to St. Petersburg, Florida, an untraditional hub for high finance. [Link]

Miami Vice’s Journey From Misfire to Masterpiece by Bilge Ebiri (Vulture)

A retrospective on Michael Mann’s 2006 reboot of the iconic 1980s television series, and how its many pitfalls have started to look much better with age. [Link]

Reopening

This Halloween, Americans Are Ready to Party Like It’s 2019 by Alyssa Meyers (Morning Consult)

Only 42% of American adults reported they were planning to celebrate Halloween during the pandemic-dominated 2020. But this year, numbers are back to normal, with more than half saying they’ll partake. [Link]

New Zealand admits it can no longer get rid of coronavirus by Nick Perry (AP)

Relative to its population, New Zealand has suffered roughly one quarter of one percent as many deaths as the US, but the sterling performance of lockdowns and test and trace in New Zealand has finally reached too high of a cost for the island nation. [Link]

Climate

Pick-up trucks and climate politics: will American drivers go electric? by Claire Bushey (FT)

A comprehensive review of the American auto industry’s efforts to get Americans to drive electric pickups, which the industry is hoping will play a spectacular role in fueling both profits and emissions reductions. [Link; soft paywall]

Feeding Cattle Seaweed Reduces Their Greenhouse Gas Emissions 82 Percent by Diane Nelson (UC Davis)

A study found that adding 3 ounce doses of seaweed to cattle feed helped reduce their methane emissions by more than 80% with no impact for their weight gain. [Link]

Labor Markets

The fast-food chain Raising Cane’s is sending corporate staff to work as fry cooks, cashiers, and recruiters in its restaurants amid an expansion drive and the labor shortage: report by Stephen Jones (Insider)

It’s getting so bad in low-prerequisite labor markets that one chicken finger chain is re-tasking corporate headcount from spreadsheets and presentations to deep frying and customer service. [Link]

Teens Are Being Trained to Drive 18-Wheelers Amid Truck Driver Shortage (Inside Edition)

A California program is putting teens behind the wheel to train them to drive trucks. Boosters hope the new drivers will alleviate a labor shortage and provide good-paying careers for teenagers just out of high school. [Link; auto-playing video]

Casino’s Open

Is the Stock Market Open at 3 a.m.? This Startup Says It Should Be by Alexander Osipovich (WSJ)

A new startup exchange has filed for permission to act as a 24/7 trading venue for stocks similar to the always-on crypto markets. Existing electronic exchanges for equity-linked assets like futures are still not operating around the clock, despite much longer trading hours than US cash equity markets. [Link; paywall]

Traders phone up gambling helplines as game-like broker apps spread by Madison Darbyshire (FT)

Day traders are piling in to gambling addiction recovery groups and the SEC is looking in to the practice of gamification by app-based brokers as well as how they undermine small investors. [Link; soft paywall]

Crypto

Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions? by Zeke Faux (Bloomberg)

A global hunt for the investments that back the world’s most popular stablecoin, and a deep dive into the team that claims to be standing guard over tens of billions in client assets. [Link; soft paywall]

An Irate Collector Is Suing the NFT Platform Nifty Gateway Over the Terms of a Very Weird Beeple Auction by Sarah Cascone (Artnet)

As if losing an auction for an extremely rare NFT wasn’t enough, one investor still had to pony up for the second-place offering, part of what can only be described as an obvious scam that is par for the course in the wild west of digital art. [Link]

Big Thoughts

The long-run effects of religious persecution: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition by Maricio Drelichman, Jordi Vidal-Robert, and Hans-Joachim Voth (PNAS)

The upheaval of persecutions during the Spanish Inquisition was so dramatic that it has a direct impact on incomes, education levels, and social trust levels in Spain half a millennia after the original conflict. [Link]

We have no theory of inflation by Duncan Weldon (Value Added)

A long musing on the dearth of viable inflation models and why that complicates the task of monetary policy setting in both directions. [Link]

The Mafia

Lousy Management, Knucklehead Hires Plague Operations of Real-Life Sopranos by James Fanelli (WSJ)

A reliance on phones, less street smarts, and a cushy suburban upbringing make the newest generation of mobsters poorly suited to the role of wise guy, and a major liability when indictments come down. [Link; paywall]

Hand-Wringing

Valuation not stories ultimately determines investment returns by Richard Bernstein (FT)

The latest in a long string of luminaries blames the Federal Reserve for perceived ills in the market, while simultaneously comparing the current bubble to the tech boom in the late 1990s when monetary policy was much less accommodative. [Link; soft paywall]

Real Estate

The feared eviction ‘tsunami’ has not yet happened. Experts are conflicted on why. by Rachel Siegel and Jonathan O’Connell (WaPo)

The end of a national eviction moratorium has come and gone, but the number of evictions has not surged in a much of the country, puzzling experts who worried millions would be cast out during the pandemic. [Link; soft paywall]

Serial

Zodiac Killer Allegedly Identified by Team of Independent Investigators by Trace William Cowen (Complex)

While police representatives argue the findings are incorrect, a team of independent investigators claims to have identified the Zodiac serial killer who haunted the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s. [Link]

Vaccines

In major decision, WHO recommends broad rollout of world’s first malaria vaccine by Helen Branswell (StatNews)

A 4-dose malaria vaccine has been recommended for broad use by the World Health Organization following promising clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa. [Link]

Governing

Idaho lieutenant governor bans vaccine mandates, tries to deploy National Guard during governor’s 2-day trip by Peter Weber (Yahoo!/The Week)

For the second time this year, the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho has usurped the Governor of that state to make policy changes while the Governor is out of the state. [Link]

Social Media

Facebook Is Not a Teen Favorite, Survey Says. These Social-Media Sites Are. by Eric J. Savitz (Barron’s)

Teenagers prefer Snapchat and TikTok to Facebook’s Instagram platform or the core site. Twitter and Twitch were also well down the popularity list. [Link; paywall]

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Have a great weekend!

The fourth quarter is now off to the races and we thought it worthwhile to check in on the best and worst-performing S&P 500 stocks on a year-to-date basis.  As shown below, there are currently six members of the index that have rallied over 100% this year.  Apt for the year that its vaccine has rolled out, the biggest gainer of these has been Moderna (MRNA) with a 196.12% rally.  It now has a market cap of $124.87 billion versus a market cap of only $41 billion at the start of the year. Of the 20 best performers, MRNA is also the only one with a market cap above $100 billion. The next largest is ConocoPhillips (COP) with a $95.76 billion market cap.  COP is one of multiple Energy stocks on this list as well. Of the top 20 performers, Energy sector names dominate the list with 8 members.

Pivoting to the other end of the spectrum, Las Vegas Sands (LVS) is down the most this year having been cut by 36.18%.  IPG Photonics (IPGP), Lamb Weston Holdings (LW), Viatris (VTRS), MarketAxess (MKTX), and Global Payments (GPN) also have fallen by at least 25%.  Once again, there is only one member of this list with a market cap above $100 billion: Qualcomm (QCOM).  One other interesting factor to note of the worst performers is there are several stocks that were at some point plays on pandemic trends, whether those be reopening or stay at home. For example, in addition to LVS, another gaming/reopening name, Wynn Resorts (WYNN), ranks as the eighth-worst performer YTD.  Additionally, strong performers during the onset of the pandemic like Clorox (CLX), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) are all down double digits this year.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.