Over the last week or so we've seen an upside reversal in many of the Public Sector Bank stocks across the large, mid, and small-cap segments of the market. This has many wondering whether or not this is "the bottom" in this sector or if it's simply "a bottom" within the context of many structural downtrends. In this post we'll take a look into the sector to see what the weight of evidence suggests might be the answer to this question.
During our July Members Only Conference Call we discussed a lot of the big-picture trends from around the world and in India, but we wanted to do a long post discussing what we're seeing in the small-cap space. In this post I'll cover what we're seeing in the index itself, as well as get into some of its most actionable components. Also check out our mid-cap post here.
During our July Members Only Conference Call we discussed a lot of the big-picture trends from around the world and in India, but we wanted to do a long post discussing what we're seeing in the mid-cap space. In this post I'll cover what we're seeing in the index itself, as well as get into some of its most actionable components.
One of the most underrated tools we have as U.S. Stock Market participants is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I often hear how because it's price weighted, or because it only has 30 stocks, it cannot be relied upon as a gauge of market health. In the past, I've written about how I use it and why these criticisms are irresponsible. I encourage you to read through our Free Educational section to see how we use the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other various tools that we have at our disposal.
The relative weakness of the Nifty Free Float Smallcap 100 has been a theme all throughout 2018, so with today's chart of the week I want to take a look at what that potentially means for the broader market.
Market Breadth has been a hot topic as of late, which is why we've talked about it here, here, here, and here over the last month. Last week we discussed market breadth from a global perspective by measuring the trends and momentum readings of stock markets from all around the world, as well as the US sectors and sub-sectors. Today we're going to expand on that by looking at the internals specific to the US stock market. I will warn you in advance that this is a bit of a long post, but I don't want to give the bears a chance to say that we're relying too heavily on one or two charts to support our conclusion.
This past week I came across a potential trade setup in an Indian micro-cap stock that really got me thinking about the question, "Who am I as a market participant?". With all the noise created on a daily basis, it's easy to lose sight of your answer to this simple question, but doing so inhibits your ability to make any decision about markets responsibly.
You have two options as an investor: you could listen to the media or you could listen to the market. They've been pushing the notion lately that only a handful of Tech stocks are leading the way for the market, suggesting a weakening breadth environment. In the real world, however, we are participating in a united rally among Tech stocks as a group.
In fact, the Equally-Weighted Technology Index went out just 0.4% away from another all-time weekly closing high, just shy of it's record high set last month. This is the Equally-Weighted Index, not the Cap-weighted index that the bears are suggesting is pointing to weakening breadth because the big names are such a large portion. If it was true that only a handful of names are going up and market breadth is deteriorating, the Equally-weighted index, which takes the extra-large market capitalization stocks completely out of the equation, would not be behaving this way.
The Nasdaq 100 just hit another all-time high, as did the amount of people quoting the percentage of the index's gains that are from its top five components. While that makes for a good headline and soundbite, it's not really all that actionable. What is actionable is the chart below, which we spoke about in early June.
It's been quite a few years since I did these youtube videos, but with the help of technology and a solid team, this is something we can start doing again on a regular basis.
Here is the first video with a throwback to the old days and then we get into Consumer Discretionary stocks and why I think they will continue to be a leading indicator for the overall market.
