The curtain is about to come down on the US quarterly earnings season. As we wrote last week, for the most part companies have impressed – with the caveat that Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ) will provide a pretty big full stop on proceedings next week (you can read more on what to expect here).

The beats we have seen potentially reflect the impact of analysts attempting the complicated task of gauging the impact of tariffs. Nonetheless, the resilience of US corporate earnings is notable.

It’s why some observers think talk of an end to US exceptionalism is premature. Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, head of ISG (Investment Strategy Group) and chief investment officer at Goldman Sachs Wealth Management, states that US equities tend to align with the long-term trend of US corporate earnings, making being underweight US equities challenging.

She also notes that missing the strongest trading days can impact returns when attempting to time the market, which supports the idea of remaining invested over the long term – an idea we have talked about frequently in these pages.  

‘Don’t try to time the market, because it’s very rare that anybody can do that,’ Mossavar-Rahmani says. According to Goldman Sachs, missing just the 50 best trading days since the global financial crisis reduces the S&P 500’s annualised returns from approximately 17% to around 3%.

Her colleague at Goldman, Brett Nelson, head of tactical asset allocation for ISG, also points out some technical pointers which suggest the US market might continue to perform: ‘When we look at the fact the market has recovered all its losses from April, reached new all-time highs, and participation in the rally expanded significantly off the April lows… all of these factors are historically consistent with ongoing momentum.’

Whether this optimism is justified or not is likely to become clearer in the third quarter when the impact of tariffs may be more visible, with October looking set to provide another acid test for US stocks.

The US is certainly home to some of the world’s leading brands and in this issue we look at the power of brands in more detail. We also examine what happens when a brand’s value starts to fade, and highlight one up and coming and one established brand which look interesting from an investment perspective.

We also take a delve into leading technology investment trust Allianz Technology Trust (ATT) and how it has managed to outperform while being underweight Microsoft (MSFT) and Nvidia.

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