Credit cycle investors have performed on par with the S&P 500 since the beginning of March, with an allocation to US banks followed by US Industrials, generating returns of just over 16%. This performance beat Nasdaq, which increased by just under 12%, global equities at 9% (the UK market also rose by 9%), and US government bonds across all maturities which returned just 2%. Despite this positive performance, many investors remain somewhat skeptical that the US can continue to outperform other international equity markets such as the UK due to the current level of valuations. Exhibit 1: Asset class returns

U.S. equity investors in the six year period between 1973 and 1978 would have made no nominal return on their investment, with inflation averaging 7.7%. Hence it is understandable that investors remain so concerned about the potential impact of a higher rate of rising prices. This is why all eyes are currently on the bond market and whether it is signalling a return to the 1970s, and whether firms will be able to maintain and grow profit margins. No need to panic The U.S. February 2021 inflation data showed an increase of 0.4%, resulting in an annualized consumer price index

Admittedly, the title to this article may be a pun too far. However, in this post, we’ll show you where you could have found signs of potential distress within rental car company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (HTZ.N), well before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 26. The analytics presented in this report come from Refinitiv’s suite of StarMine quant models. As shown in Exhibit 1, the Eikon widget that sorts StarMine models into bullish and bearish categories show many bearish indicators for Hertz and not a single bullish one. StarMine models fall into two categories – alpha