How to do top-down analysis?

I previously interned at an investment strategy team that covered US equities so I can give a little bit of color.

It’s a little bit of everything. Focusing a bit on macro such as economic output (CLI, ISM, etc), inflation, and rates are important to monitor but not your main focus. You could also look into drivers behind sector performances, overall sector EPS growth vs PE expansion, etc (also ties into macro). You could also look into style factors (growth, value, quality, etc). There’s also a relative valuation component of it. Then there’s a geopolitical aspect to it, incorporating the effects of geopolitical conflicts into your views as well as the occasional fluctuation in commodity prices or political cycle.

Overall, I would say being in an equity strategist role is a lot of generalization + puzzle solving to form a comprehensive picture of what’s happening in the economy and how that might affect the S&P, Nasdaq, some sector, etc (whatever clients are worried about). A lot of the data flow infrastructure and dashboards are already built out and your main task is to figure out how to incorporate these new pieces of information into your evolving view as well as effectively communicate your view to clients. Outside of that, your day to day besides speaking to clients, creating decks, looking into data, etc could be just listening into fed speak while it’s live or building out new dashboards to make your life easier.