U.S. value stocks are beating growth equities in the first week of 2022, extending their outperformance in December and faring better through the broad market slump sparked Wednesday by investor concern the Federal Reserve was considering more hawkish steps toward combating high inflation.
Investors have at times seen a tug of war between growth and value during the pandemic, after a long stretch of underperformance for value stocks following the global financial crisis of 2008. Minutes of the Fed’s December meeting, released Wednesday, showed officials considering raising rates sooner and faster in the face of high inflation as well as discussion around shrinking the central bank’s balance sheet as another form of monetary tightening.
“The new information this week that the market is responding to is that the language has changed quite a bit,” Thomas said of the Fed meeting minutes. The Russell 1000 Value index has outperformed the Russell 1000 Growth index by 8.6 percentage points on a total return basis since the end of November through Jan. 6, FactSet data show.