“If you can learn to create a state of mind that is not affected by the market’s behaviour, the struggle will cease to exist.” – Mark Douglas

After two lousy days for the equity market, futures were attempting a bounce but have drifted back towards the unchanged level as treasury yields rise and oil prices bounce. Initial Jobless Claims were just released and they came in at 166K which was below the 200K consensus forecast and the lowest weekly reading since November 1968! Continuing Claims, however, surprised to the upside coming in at a level of 1.523 million versus forecasts for a level of 1.302 million. That’s it for economic data today, but in terms of fed-speak, at 9 AM eastern we’ll hear from Bullard, and then at 2 PM Bostic and Evans will be speaking.

It’s been a rough week for the broader market as the S&P 500 has declined more than 2.5% over the last five trading days (since 3/30 close). In looking at the performance of individual sectors over that span, performance has been about what you would expect in a tape with a more defensive tone. While cyclical sectors like Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, Technology, and Financials have been crushed with declines of more than 4%. Defensive sectors have actually bucked the trend. Utilities have actually risen more than 3%, Real Estate is up over 2%, Consumer Staples have risen 1.8%, and even Health Care is in the green.

What’s also notable about the current levels of sectors is that in spite of the weak tape, just three sectors closed below their 50-day moving averages yesterday, and six sectors are either at overbought or ‘extreme’ overbought levels. That fact says more about how much the market had rallied leading up to the last day of the quarter than it does about the magnitude of the recent declines. After gains like we saw in the back half of March, it is only natural to see the market take a pause or even pull back.