While the deck of cards that market participants base their investment decisions upon has remained constant since COVID-19 changed the global dynamic 18 months ago, continued reshuffling of that deck has catalyzed significant month-to-month volatility across asset classes, equity sectors and factors. Unprecedented levels of liquidity remains the dominant variable pushing equity indices higher, yet larger-than-expected rates of deceleration in the American and Chinese economies (please see graph below), combined with fears surrounding the Delta variant, caused the growth style of investing to continue to outperform value during August.