Gold has delivered eye-catching gains in recent years, surging past $4,000 per ounce this year and headlining financial media with talk of safe havens, inflation fears, and geopolitical uncertainty. This performance has increased investor enthusiasm, but history and research suggest caution.

Interest rates don’t always make headlines, but when they do, they tend to shake everything else. That’s because rates sit at the heart of the economy: they influence borrowing costs, savings yields, and business investment.

While history has shown that US stock markets have handily outperformed international developed markets in nine of the last eleven calendar years, we may be due for a sea change.

As we begin the last quarter of a surreal 2020, SJS feels compelled to “unmask” the U.S. stock market’s performance year-to-date.

Your likelihood of “picking” these individual stock winners in advance out of the pool of 500 stocks, let alone picking all of them, is virtually zero.