Global Equities Breadth Check - As Bad As 2015
As I was going through and updating some client chart packs, I noticed an interesting development in the global equities country breadth charts. The proportion of countries (we track 70 for this analysis) trading above their respective 200-day moving average (a good rough proxy for whether a market is an up vs downtrend) reached the lowest point since the twin corrections and near-miss global recession of 2015/16.
I think this is a key chart to be across because it feels like we are in a similar potential kind of "near-miss" scenario where the pressure is really starting to mount on emerging markets. The way a lot of key markets, e.g. global cyclicals vs defensives, are trading right now it's not going to take much at all to trigger off a broader and deeper correction. So the improvement that we've already seen in valuations might look better before long...
BONUS CHART: Another traditional market analysis technique applied to country breadth; this is the number of countries making 52-week new lows. In line with my comments above, the concern with this one is that the indicator looks to be in a steady uptrend (but without making a cathartic blowout - at least not yet!).
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