Global markets have sold off in response to Trump's sweeping tariffs.
This is no longer just a regular dip in a bull market, it is turning into a significant cause for concern for more sustained weakness.
Two key industry groups to demonstrate this is housing $ITB, which has broken down and is now trending lower.
And semiconductors $SOX which has completed a major topping pattern.
Arguably the two most important industry groups have broken down, and are now in defined downtrends.
This isn't just a regular dip; unless we see risk assets take a significant rebound (and quickly), we're transitioning into a deeper correction that could last months, if not quarters.
Markets have sold off as Trump announced his sweeping tariffs to America's trading partners. There's certainly a lot of fast moving action hitting the tape and we're at a crossroads; does the market continue its selling or reverse on what was a monumental announcement?
While we certainly entertain these moves, the beauty of these rankings is that it adopts a longer-term horizon and smooths out the noise we're seeing this week.
More U.S. growth thematic ETFs are falling on the leaderboard, as technology breaks to new relative lows.
But despite this, a theme that's remained persistently strong is the video gaming and esports space. VanEck's $ESPO ETF, while pulling back, has exhibited fantastic relative strength in a market that's punished growth.
So long as ESPO is above its prior cycle highs near 80, this is an investment theme that remains a leader.
Technology $XLK is well into the red now as U.S. growth underperforms.
Most interestingly, Technology $XLK just broke down relative to the S&P 500 while Financials $XLF is still outperforming.
While the conditions in U.S. equities hasn't been favorable, it's not indiscriminately bearish. In other words, as technology underperforms, sectors like financials and communications are still holding in.
As investors find out more information on the Trump tariffs today; considering much of this recent money flow out of U.S. stocks has been driven by this rhetoric, it isn't outside the realm of possibility that tech bottoms here on a classic "sell the rumor, buy the news" event.
Of course, for now, the relative trend in tech is now down and we need to wait for confirmation of a trend reversal.
The average stock in the S&P 500 is currently in a bear market, with a decline of -20.8%.
Here’s the chart:
Let's break down what the chart shows:
The blue line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
The red line in the bottom panel shows the average 52-week drawdown of S&P 500 Stocks.
The Takeaway: Yesterday, the S&P 500 experienced a massive decline, dropping by 4.8%. This marks the largest one-day decline for the index since June 2020.
2025 has been quite the ride so far. In early February, the S&P 500 was at all-time highs. However, just 31 trading days later, the index is down over -12%.
And right now, the average stock in the S&P 500 is in a bear market… Down -20.8%
If you took the time to look under the hood, you'd see that most stocks have not been rising for a while. While some stocks have performed well, the majority have not.
Breadth has been telling us that the market was weak…
We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.
However, when it comes to this one, it couldn't be any simpler!
With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.
Welcome to TheJunior Hall of Famers.
This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.
There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.
Below is my weekly video for members of Macke's Retail Roundup.
Fear has entered the market.
Not panic just yet, but Wednesday afternoon in the Rose Garden, POTUS unleashed the Kraken on the market, the global economy, and just about any retailer selling clothing or making shoes.
We knew the tariffs were coming. We realized the cost of doing business was going up, and it was going to somehow be passed along to consumers. But until the President held up his Reciprocal Tariff tag board, it wasn’t clear just how much of a blood sport this was going to be.
I discussed the implications and reaction in this week's Retail Roundup Video.
Insiders keep stepping in to buy the dips across industries as U.S. equities continue to struggle.
Here are today’s standouts:
📌 Zymeworks $ZYME saw a bold insider move, with ECOR1 Capital buying 127,415 shares, equivalent to $1,5 million.
📌 Staar Surgical $STAA also caught our attention, as Broadwood Partners increased their stake with a $941,285 purchase.
Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 2, 2025:
Click the table to enlarge it.
📌 Last but not least, Point72 Asset Management, the hedge fund led by legendary investor Steve Cohen, just filed a 13G revealing an increased stake in Shoals Technologies $SHLS.
The firm boosted its position from 3.32% to 5.40%, signaling a passive investment in the solar infrastructure company.
Stocks are getting hammered after President Trump's Reciprocal Tariffs were larger and broader than economists anticipated. Retailers and tech are leading the way lower early, which has been the case since this sell-off started to pick up steam in late January.
The immediate impact will hammer the margins of companies importing and/or manufacturing which, in the market consumer world is almost anything you can think of, to one degree or another. The declines in the pre-market tends to reflect worse-case back of the envelope calculations for how hard companies will be hit based on the announced tariffs which, it should be noted repeatedly, are "immediate", "permanent" and "open to negotiation". Three words not typically used to describe the same action, yet here we are.
Take Nike. Please. Nike produces 50% of its shoes in Vietnam, 18% in China and 27% in Indonesia.
Going into the news conference Nike had probably been planning to shift some production around to whichever countries got the best terms. If so, this was a very bad moment in Beaverton:
The S&P 500 has gone 639 consecutive trading days without a -3% decline.
Here’s the chart:
Let's break down what the chart shows:
The blue line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
The black lines in the bottom panel indicates the number of consecutive days since the S&P 500 experienced a daily move of -3% or less.
The Takeaway: As I write this daily note, the S&P 500 futures are down over 3% after Trump imposed tariffs on most countries around the globe last night.
The last time the S&P 500 experienced a drop this significant was 639 trading days ago, which was during the cost-of-living crisis in 2022.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, there have been 104 days with a change of -3% or less, with most of these down days happening while the market was in a sizeable drawdown.
When examining the S&P 500's forward returns, we find that on days with a decline of -3%, there is only a 55% chance the market will be positive two weeks later.