Despite the Federal Reserve (Fed) cutting interest rates and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate falling from its high of 8% in 2023 to just over 6%, the U.S. housing market continues to face challenges. Sellers are facing tepid demand and seeing potential buyers back out. Affordability, despite recent improvements, remains far below pre-pandemic levels. Residential investment per household has not improved, and structural factors mean supply constraints and price pressures could continue even if the Fed lowers rates further.
In this note, Jim Wright, Fund Manager of the Premier Miton Global Infrastructure Income Fund, examines the reported damage to Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG terminal - a facility responsible for around 20% of global imported LNG - and the shockwaves it has sent through energy markets. He also highlights how rapidly expanding LNG capacity in the US and Canada positions North America to play an increasingly important role in supporting global supply in the years ahead.
Momentum trading strategies exploit return persistence, but conventional past-year cumulative-return measures generate a noisy signal that attenuates performance. We propose a pure momentum strategy that identifies trends directly from daily returns. Our method reduces volatility, tail risk, and transaction costs while enhancing profitability. Performance is primarily driven by long positions in winners, supporting theories postulating overconfidence. The bad news, instead, appears to be incorporated more slowly. In particular, we show that omitting the most recent month is unnecessary to identify winners.