S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are off to an ever so slightly positive start to the week as the Dow underperforms with modest declines, and in other news, the sun also came up this morning. The underperformance of the Dow and smaller cap stocks relative to Nvidia (NVDA) the S&P 500 won’t last forever, but it hasn’t shown any signs of stopping either.

The only economic indicator on the calendar today is the New York Fed’s Empire Manufacturing report which was less negative than expected (-6.0 vs -10.0) after a reading of -15.6 last month. It’s a quiet week for earnings, and the only earnings reports after the close are La-Z-Boy (LZB) and Lennar (LEN). Overnight, Asian stocks were mostly lower with Japan leading the way as the Nikkei dropped nearly 2% as BoJ Governor Ueda suggested that a July rate hike is possible and that the pace of bond purchases would slow. In Europe, equities attempted to rebound from last week’s declines early on but erased all of those early gains, and the STOXX 600 is now marginally lower.

In the realm of strange weeks, last week fit the mold. The S&P 500 rallied 1.58% for the week, yet just 183 stocks in the index finished the week in positive territory, and only 99 stocks outperformed the index. That’s the definition of a top-heavy index. At the sector level, the disparities were just as pronounced. With the Technology sector surging more than 6%, it was the only sector that outperformed the S&P 500, and the only other sector that finished the week even up 1% was Real Estate. On the downside, two sectors – Energy and Financials- were down 2%, another two were down at least 1%, and three more finished down for the week. How often do you remember a week when the S&P 500 was up over 1% but twice as many sectors were down at least 1% than up 1%?

Digging down another level, of the 24 S&P 500 industry groups, only three managed to outperform the S&P 500, and they were all part of the tech sector (Semis, Tech Hardware, and Software). Here again, nearly twice as many industry groups finished the week down at least 1% (nine) as up 1%, and three times as many finished the week lower (18) as higher (6). It may have been an up week, but if your portfolio underperformed or was even down for the week, you were not alone.

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