🌍Macro & market cycles

The macroeconomic context is the backdrop against which individual stock selection plays out. Inflation, interest rates, the business cycle and sector rotation decide which kinds of companies have a tailwind and which fight the current. When a central bank raises rates, growth and leveraged companies tend to come under pressure; when rates fall, they revive. Understanding the cycle phase — expansion, peak, recession, recovery — helps place every signal into a wider picture rather than deciding in a vacuum. Key macro variables share relationships that repeat through history. Inflation and interest rates usually move together, the dollar index influences commodities and multinational profits, and the bond yield curve has historically been a watched indicator of economic change. Sector rotation then describes how capital shifts between sectors depending on where we are in the cycle — defensive sectors (utilities, staples) tend to be stronger in uncertainty, cyclicals (technology, industrials) in expansion. QMA reflects the macro regime in its scoring: in a different environment the pillars carry different weight. The goal is not to forecast the market with certainty — nobody can — but to understand the conditions in which you decide. The scenario descriptions here are structured and conditional (bull / base / bear), never forecasts stated with certainty.