Report
Dave Nicoski ...
  • Ross LaDuke
EUR 235.55 For Business Accounts Only

Vermilion Macro Vision: U.S. Equity Strategy

STRATEGY: Rotations in Progress

As we write this, fears of a reprisal attack by Saudi Arabia are being priced into the markets. Oil is surging on the back of the largest ever supply disruption in history. Investment managers are likely caught on the wrong side of the Energy Sector move and were very underweight as the Sector's performance has, year-to-date, been nothing but an anchor on performance. The age old adage of “parabolic moves often don't end well” can be applied to those areas going in either direction, up or down. These events as we have seen throughout history often mark a top or bottom. The Energy Sector has underperformed for well over a decade and the sector is at its lowest weighting in the S&P 500 going back to 2005. We are taking this opportunity to upgrade the Energy Sector to a Market Weight from an Underweight as we do believe retaliatory action is highly likely.

The move to value is a trend that we see likely to continue, as massive underperformance plaguing the Value stocks has occurred for years. We believe that breadth will actually improve as value closes the performance gap vs growth equities. Small-caps have also done an about face vs large caps (Russell 2000 vs Russell 1000) after having broken to RS lows not seen since 2009. We believe this will result in a move that would likely take us back up to the top of the range assuming a recession is off the table.
Underlyings
Alphabet Inc. Class A

Alphabet is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company is engaged in a collection of businesses, which its primary business is Google. The company reports all non-Google businesses collectively as Other Bets. Google's main products and platforms are Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play, Search, and YouTube. The company also provides advertisers with tools that help them attribute and measure their advertising campaigns. In addition, Other Bets includes Access, Calico, CapitalG, GV, Verily, Waymo, and X, among others. Other Bets primarily engages in the sales of internet and TV services through Access as well as licensing and research and development services through Verily.

Amazon.com Inc.

Amazon.com serves consumers through its online and physical stores. The company also manufactures and sells electronic devices, including Kindle, Fire tablet, Fire TV, Echo, and Ring, and the company develops and produces media content. The company operates customer service centers and provides programs that enable sellers to grow their businesses, sell their products in its stores, and fulfill orders through the company The company serves developers and enterprises of various sizes, including start-ups, government agencies, and academic institutions, through its Amazon Web Services segment, which provides a set of global compute, storage, database, and other service offerings. The company also provides services, such as advertising.

Apple Inc.

Apple designs, manufactures and markets smartphones, personal computers, tablets, wearables and accessories, and sells a variety of related services. The company's products include: iPhone; Mac; iPad; and wearables, home and accessories, which includes AirPods?, Apple TV?, Apple Watch?, Beats? products, HomePod?, iPod touch? and other Apple-branded and third-party accessories. The company's services include: digital content stores and streaming services; AppleCare, which includes AppleCare + (AC+) and the AppleCare Protection Plan; iCloud, which is the company's cloud service; licensing; and other services, which include Apple Arcade?, Apple Card?, Apple News+, and Apple Pay, a cashless payment service.

Applied Materials Inc.

Applied Materials provides manufacturing equipment, services and software to the semiconductor, display and related industries. The company's segments are: Semiconductor Systems, which develops, manufactures and sells a range of manufacturing equipment used to fabricate semiconductor chips; Applied Global Services, which provides integrated solutions to support equipment and fab performance and productivity; and Display and Adjacent Markets, which is comprised of products for manufacturing liquid crystal displays, organic light-emitting diodes and other display technologies for TVs, monitors, laptops, personal computers, electronic tablets, smart phones, and other consumer-oriented devices.

ASML Holding N.V.

Blackbaud Inc.

Blackbaud is a cloud software company. The company is engaged in providing software solutions in cloud and hosted environments, providing payment and transaction services, providing software maintenance and support services, and providing services, including implementation, consulting, training, analytic and other services. The company's portfolio provides fundraising and relationship management, marketing and engagement, financial management, grant and award management, organizational and program management (such as education management, church management and ticketing), social responsibility, payment services and analytics.

CBIZ Inc.

CBIZ provides business services, products and solutions to manage finances and employees. These services are provided to primarily small and midsized businesses, as well as individuals, governmental entities and not-for-profit enterprises. The company provides its services through three groups: Financial Services, which provides accounting and tax, government healthcare consulting, financial advisory, valuation and risk advisory services; Benefits and Insurance Services, which provides group health benefits consulting, payroll, property and casualty, and retirement plan services; and National Practices, which provides managed networking and hardware services, as well as healthcare consulting.

Cirrus Logic Inc.

Cirrus Logic focuses on low-power integrated circuits (ICs) for audio, voice and other signal-processing applications. The company's product lines include: Portable Products, including codecs, which are chips that integrate analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) into a single IC, smart codecs, which are codecs with digital signal processing integrated, amplifiers, micro-electromechanical systems microphones, haptic drivers, standalone digital signal processors, and its SoundClear? technology, which includes a portfolio of tools, software and algorithms; and Non-Portable and Other Products, which include ICs, codecs, ADCs, DACs, digital interfaces and amplifiers.

Deluxe Corporation

Deluxe is engaged in providing payment solutions. The company's marketing solutions and other services provides products and services designed to meet its customers' sales and marketing needs, as well as various other service offerings. The company's forms, accessories and other products provides printed business forms, including deposit tickets, billing forms, work orders, job proposals, purchase orders, invoices and personnel forms, as well as computer forms compatible with accounting software packages commonly used by small businesses. The company also provides other customized products, including envelopes, office supplies, ink stamps, labels, deposit tickets, check registers and checkbook covers.

Facebook Inc. Class A

Facebook is building and engaging products that enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, virtual reality headsets, and in-home devices. The company's products include: Facebook, which enables people to connect, share, discover, and communicate with each other on mobile devices and personal computers; Instagram, which is a place where people can express themselves through photos, videos, and private messaging, and explore their interests in businesses, creators and communities; Messenger and WhatsApp, which are messaging applications; and Oculus, which connects people through its Oculus virtual reality products.

Huron Consulting Group Inc.

Huron Consulting Group is a consulting firm. The company partners with clients to develop strategies and implement solutions that enable the transformative change its clients need. The company's segments are: Healthcare, which provides care transformation, financial and operational, technology and analytics, and leadership development; Business Advisory, which provides services to large and middle market organizations, not-for-profit organizations, lending institutions, law firms, investment banks and private equity firms; and Education, which provides consulting and technology solutions to higher education institutions and academic medical centers.

Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Energy ETF

Kornit Digital Ltd.

Lam Research Corporation

Lam Research is a supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry. The company designs, manufactures, markets, refurbishes, and services semiconductor processing equipment used in the fabrication of integrated circuits. The company's customer base includes semiconductor memory, foundry, and integrated device manufacturers that make products such as non-volatile memory, dynamic random-access memory, and logic devices. The company's services include customer service, spares, improvement, and refurbishment of its deposition, etch, and clean products. The company sells its products and services to companies in the United States, China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan.

Leidos Holdings Inc.

Leidos Holdings is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company is engaged in a science, engineering and information technology that provides services and solutions in the defense, intelligence, civil and health markets. The company's defense solutions segment deploys solutions in the areas of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, enterprise information technology, integrated systems, cybersecurity and global services. The company's civil segment integrates and protects physical, digital and data domains. The company's health segment delivers solutions to federal and commercial customers that are responsible for the health and well-being of people including service members and veterans.

Market Vectors Oil Services ETF

MAXIMUS Inc.

MAXIMUS is an operator of government health and human services programs worldwide. The company's segments are: United States Health and Human Services, which provides a variety of business process services such as program administration, appeals and assessments work and related consulting work; United States Federal Services, which provides program administration, appeals and assessments services and technology solutions, including system and software development and maintenance services; and Outside the United States, which provides business process services solutions for governments and commercial clients in geographies beyond the United States, including health and disability assessments.

Netflix Inc.

Netflix is engaged in subscription streaming entertainment service including TV series, documentaries and feature films across a variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, without commercials. Additionally, several members in the United States subscribe to the company's DVD-by-mail service. The company improves its streaming content with a focus on a programming mix of content. The company's members can download a selection of titles for offline viewing. The company operates its business as a global operating segment.

NVIDIA Corporation

NVIDIA engages in graphics processing unit (GPU)-based visual computing and accelerated computing platforms. The company has two segments, GPU and Tegra Processor, which are based on a single underlying architecture. The company's GPU product brands are aimed at markets including GeForce for gamers; Quadro for designers; Tesla and DGX for artificial intelligence data scientists and big data researchers; and GRID for cloud-based visual computing users. The company's Tegra brand integrates an entire computer onto a single chip, and incorporates GPUs and multi-core CPUs to drive supercomputing for autonomous robots, drones, and cars, as well as for game consoles and mobile gaming and entertainment devices.

NXP Semiconductors NV

NXP Semiconductors is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, Co. is engaged as a global semiconductor company and a long-standing supplier in the industry. Co. provides High-Performance Mixed-Signal and Standard Product solutions. Co.'s product solutions are used in automotive, identification, wireless infrastructure, lighting, industrial, mobile, consumer and computing applications. Co. engages with original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and sell products in all major geographic regions.

Power Integrations Inc.

Power Integrations designs, develops and markets analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits and other electronic components and circuitry used in high-voltage power conversion. The company's products are used in power converters that convert electricity from a high-voltage source to the type of power required for a specified downstream use. In most cases, this conversion entails, among other functions, converting alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) or vice versa, reducing or increasing the voltage, and regulating the output voltage and/or current according to the customer's specifications. The company's products are AC-DC power conversion, High-voltage gate drivers, and Motor-driver products.

Sapiens International Corp. N.V.

Sapiens International is a global provider of software solutions for the insurance industry. Co.'s offerings include a broad range of software solutions and services, comprised of (i) core software solutions for the insurance industry, including Property & Casualty/General Insurance (“P&C”) and Life, Annuities and Pensions (“L&P”) products, and record keeping software solutions for providers of Retirement Services (ii) variety of technology based solution including business decision management solutions for the financial services industry, including insurance, banking and capital markets and (iii) global services including project delivery and implementation of Co.'s software solutions.

Select Sector SPDR-Energy

Switch

Switch is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company is engaged in technology infrastructure powering the sustainable growth of the connected world and the Internet of Everything. The company provides colocation space and related services to global enterprises, financial companies, government agencies, and others that conduct business on the internet. The company develops and operates data centers in Nevada, which are Tier IV Gold certified, and Michigan, and is developing data centers in Georgia, delivering redundant services with low latency and capacity transport environments.

Texas Instruments Incorporated

Texas Instruments designs and makes semiconductors that it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers. The company has two reportable segments: Analog and Embedded Processing. The company's analog semiconductors change signals, such as sound, temperature, pressure or images to a stream of digital data. The company's analog segment primary product lines includes: power, signal chain, and high volume. The company's embedded processors are designed to handle specific tasks and can be optimized for various combinations of performance, power and cost, depending on the application. The company's embedded processing segment primary product lines includes: connected microcontrollers and processors.

VSE Corp

VSE is a services and supply chain management company. The company's segments are: Supply Chain Management Group, which provides sourcing, acquisition, scheduling, transportation, shipping, logistics, data management, and other services; Aviation Group, which provides parts supply and distribution, supply chain solutions, and maintenance, repair, and overhaul services; and Federal Services Group, which provides foreign military sales services, refurbishment services, fleet-wide ship and aircraft support, aircraft sustainment and maintenance, and other technical, management, engineering, logistics, maintenance, configuration management, prototyping, technology, and field support services.

Provider
Vermilion Research
Vermilion Research

Vermilion Research delivers timely, actionable, and unique research inputs to professional investors. Our research strategists highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various proprietary technical indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. We believe our research methodology, which is not limited by industry sector or market capitalization, enables us to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing all actively traded stocks into coherent sectors, then into logical industry groups. We then apply our proprietary relative strength tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sectors or groups, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. Vermilion offers U.S. and global equity market research products. Vermilion’s research team, which has received numerous awards and accolades, has a combined 70 year of experience in the analysis of investment securities.

Analysts
Dave Nicoski

Ross LaDuke

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