A soft landing returns
The U.S. economy is still on the path toward a soft landing, even in light of August’s volatility.
The U.S. economy is still on the path toward a soft landing, even in light of August’s volatility.
09/09/2024
FUND COMMENTARY
By Graham Wong, CFA, Senior Portfolio Manager | 10/31/2023
10/31/2023
As an element of stock picking, Graham Wong, CFA, shares how he’s performed stress tests of companies during challenging market conditions.
Host: Talking about your specific fund, the Thrivent Mid Cap Value Fund, it’s weathered the storm over the Covid drawdown, but also across the 2021 bull market and the 2022 bear market. What was your approach to macro trends as you managed the Fund through market conditions? I mean, we’ve had so many different ones out there.
Wong: Right. So, the consistent theme over the last three years for us is stock selection drove most of our alpha, which is the way we want it to be. We really manage risk around the factors that you’re talking about. So, during Covid, for example, a lot of stocks were beaten down by the closing of the economy, and we went into stress testing these companies to look for opportunities. And we did similar analysis with airlines, hotels, and amusement parks in 2020.
In ’21, the bull market, again, we had strong stock selection, but that was driven by tech this time around. In ’22, the bear market, we beat in a down market as well. And one key there is, as you know, inflation was a big challenge on corporate profits in ’22‚ – this year as well – and we made sure that we owned companies with strong pricing power.
Graham Wong, CFA, makes his case for investing in undervalued companies with improving trends as a part of his core value philosophy.
Portfolio manager Graham Wong, CFA, discusses how his team analyzes banks to identify those with strong risk management.
Graham Wong, CFA, has learned to always be skeptical about consensus views by asking tough questions and using rigorous research.