Bad Breadth Across Sectors
No sector has been safe from this week’s declines. Not a single sector is higher than it was five days ago although the declines for defensive sectors like Consumer Staples (XLP), Utilities (XLU), and Real Estate (XLRE) have been less than those of other sectors. More cyclical sectors, on the other hand, are down at least 3% compared to one week ago. With regard to these sectors’ trading ranges, the past week’s declines leaves most of these deep in oversold territory. Energy, Financials, Health Care, Industrials, Materials, and the S&P 500 more broadly are now over two standard deviations below their 50-DMA as shown below in the trading range charts.
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Looking through some other charts included in our Sector Snapshot, the spread between the price and 50-DMA in percentage terms for Consumer Staples, Energy, Financials, Industrials, Materials, and again the S&P 500 more broadly is at the lowest level of the past year. With every sector having moved lower, there are now only two sectors that are above their 50-DMA (positive 50-DMA spread): Real Estate and Utilities.
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Not only are sectors falling below their 50-DMAs, but so are the individual stocks within each sector. The charts below show the percentage of stocks within each sector that are above their 50-DMAs.As shown, every sector has seen these readings fall sharply over the past several days. Energy is the worst of these as not a single stock in that sector is above its 50-DMA. Although not quite as bad, Industrials, Materials, and the S&P 500 also have the fewest stocks above their 50-DMA of all readings of the past year.
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Across the board, breadth has been notably weak as we discussed in last night’s Closer. One way of showing this is through 10-day advance/decline lines. As with most other indicators, these have fallen sharply over the past several days which means there have been far more stocks moving lower than higher each day. Over the past couple of weeks, each sector had reached fairly extreme overbought levels (red shading in charts below) at some point. But the extremely week breadth since those peaks has left every sector with the exception of Real Estate with a negative 10-Day A/D line reading. Now, these lines are approaching oversold levels.
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Finally, every sector outside of Health Care has seen more stocks reaching new 52-week lows than 52-week highs. The net percent of stocks at 52-week highs for Consumer Discretionary and Energy have blown the lowest readings of the past year out of the water. For both of these sectors, these are the lowest reading since late December 2018.
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