In today’s Morning Lineup, we noted the charts of the sector ETFs for Materials (XLB), Financials (XLF), and Industrials (XLI) and how each sector has begun to catch a bid this month. Of the eleven sectors, Financials are up the most in August with just under a 6% gain. Utilities are actually the runner-up with a 3.09% gain in spite of the coincident uptick in rates this month. Materials and Industrials are also up nicely with gains of 2.42% and 1.55%, respectively. Shown another way, below are relative strength charts of each of these sectors from our Sector Snapshot. When these lines are rising, they indicate the sector is outperforming the broader market and vice versa when the line is trending lower. Recently, each of these sectors have seen sharp turns higher after having been in downtrends for most of the spring and summer. In the case of Financials and Materials, those downtrends actually broke multi-month uptrends that had been in place since late 2020. The bounce in the relative strength line of Industrials, on the other hand, comes as it tested the past year’s uptrend line.