Under the hood of broad stock indexes (00:19) for the week ended Feb. 13, Macro Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel and Analyst Mark Kimbrough see ongoing rotation from knowledge-economy sectors such as financials, communication services and tech as well as consumer discretionary into old-economy sectors such as utilities, materials, real estate, consumer staples and energy. These money flows largely continued the stock-market leadership of the prior week. Ryan and Mark also note a change of the guard, year-to-date, in investment styles with equal-weighted large caps outperforming market-weighted large caps and value outperforming growth. In fixed income (4:06), bull curve-flattening lifted the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index, with Agency mortgage-backed securities outperforming investment grade corporates and Treasuries. In risky credits, emerging markets debt kept up with Agency MBS. Commodities (6:54) weakened, while in precious metals, silver stabilized and gold recovered above $5,000 per troy ounce.

A heavy week for macro news (8:22), retail goods sales came in somewhat weak. Encouraging news on inflation arrived with the Employment Cost Index for 4Q2025 and the Consumer Price Index for January. Nonfarm payrolls for the month came in unusually strong versus expectations. Mark cautions that the bulk of the new hires were concentrated in healthcare and social assistance, and Ryan is taking a wait-and-see attitude given this data series’ history of downward revisions. Looking ahead to the abbreviated holiday week (22:09) of Feb. 17-20, Ryan and Mark will be on the lookout for the Wednesday release of minutes of the Jan. 28 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (to see whether there is corroboration for a reprise in U.S. manufacturing) and Friday’s release of the Personal Consumption Expenditure Deflator report for December.