The recent rally for stocks has been largely fueled by investors' expectations of an economic recovery that has not yet materialized. The second part of our Letter to Shareholders, from the upcoming Semiannual Review and Report, examines how the economy holds the key to a sustained recovery for equities.

Things Have Changed

The recent rally has benefited stocks across all asset and style categories, though it gave the strongest boost to non-dividend paying companies, those without earnings and low-priced stocks. The latter group was especially compelling because companies whose share prices had hit single digits needed very little to score large percentage-point gains. At Royce, we do a lot of work in the low-priced area. While our search is for quality smaller companies that have fallen on hard times, many other investors seemed to be focused on momentum.

The significant question right now, of course, is what happens next? Late June and early July saw just enough selling for many observers to be convinced that the rally might have breathed its last, at least until more compelling evidence of a growing economy surfaces. Our own take is that the first phase of the bull market is probably complete. The rally that began in March was characterized by dynamic, double-digit returns, and stocks of all sizes in nearly all sectors and industries benefiting greatly. Around the middle of June, the market fell into a corrective period, almost as if it were catching its breath after the wild run-up of stock prices. This period could last for another few months or could be over by the time this piece is being read. We would expect an overall modest decline in the range of 10%-15%, regardless of the time frame. We also expect the next phase in the current cycle to be different—still bullish, but with returns that will not be as lofty. It seems to us we will see more historically typical performance patterns, frequent sector and industry rotation and greater discrimination on the part of investors for quality companies. We also feel confident that stocks of higher quality companies—those with solid earnings, high returns on invested capital and/or that pay dividends—should take the lead in the next bull phase.

Our reasoning is that enough investors should begin to focus on company quality now that the period of momentum-driven results appears to be behind us and a recovering economy in front of us, though no one knows how far ahead it lies. Recent selling has been driven more by fundamentals than liquidity, which is a good sign for the stability of equities as a whole. Without the sense of panic that was so prevalent in the last four months of 2008, investors would be free to think more about factors such as risk, long-term performance and sustainable growth. In such a setting, we think that quality stocks would do well across virtually all asset classes and in all industries where they can be found. So we may see, for example, small-cap leadership for a short time, then a period of large-cap outperformance, etc. However, quality is likely to be a lingering presence—a constant in a solid bull market that should otherwise see regular rotations in leadership.

Beyond Here Lies…

The economy is the elephant in the room. The recent rally was fueled in large part by investors' expectations of an economic recovery that, perhaps needless to say, has thus far not materialized. We suspect that some investors may have confused economic stabilization with economic recovery, something that surely helped the prices of certain stocks to run ahead of what their fundamentals might suggest, which in part explains why the rally lost steam in June. From an equity investor's standpoint, economic recovery is necessary for the market's bullish moves to be sustained. Rancorous debate about where the economy is and where it is going will continue. There will be plenty of disappointment and cynicism, as well as an ample supply of naysayers braying along the road to economic recovery, which we think will proceed slowly, at times at a pace of two steps forward one step back, to the point that within a year a recovery should be well under way. We do not think that it will be as driven by consumer spending, but instead will be led by revived industrial activity, natural resources and perhaps even financial services. Consumer activity will still play an important role, but we expect consumer spending to account for far less of GDP than it did prior to the recession, which will be a positive development.

We look forward to the next several months and even more so to the next three to five years. Our own confidence about the economy and the equity markets is tempered by the fact that ‘less bad' does not equate to ‘good.' We suspect that the next round of concerns will center on the pace of improvement rather than the question of its existence, which seems to dominate economic discussions as of this writing. Yet the current mood, part of which we have just described and which seems to shift from optimism to pessimism and back again, often in the space of a single day, is infinitely preferable to the panic and capitulation that made last fall and winter so chilling. This is the kind of incremental, at times imperceptible, progress that we expect the economy to make. The market's moves, far easier to track, will be less subtle, but both should be moving, however slowly, to a far better place.

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