With about two months of trading left in 2019, investors are in a strange position. True, calendar 2019 has been pretty good, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index up a robust 20%. However, stocks continue to hang just below the all-time highs, unable to burst through.

Even though it’s been a good year, that’s in part due to last December’s bear market. So the bear warning cry is reduced to this: The market hasn’t really gone anywhere in 18 months.

That’s true but my base case for the final weeks of this year remains a roughly 3% rally into yearend, taking the S&P 500 above the old closing high of 3026 (July 26) and to around my target of 3125.

How should investors position their portfolios for the next ten weeks or so, particularly given the considerable macro uncertainty, such as the U.S.-China trade tiff, or Brexit, or the direction of rates? My view is based partly on what the market has done for the past 20 years, and on our work on certain potential economic signals.

Since 1999, the best playbook for the last ten weeks of the year has been to stick with the “year-to-date winners” (top 3 sectors), which outperformed the middle five and bottom three sectors. Additionally, the final 10 weeks historically call for a switch from to value stock...

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