Is The Bull Really Dead?

It was just a month ago that we asked if there was any upside left in the S&P 500. Back then, we noted a “wall of worry” set up in the SPY-OEF spread, the price differential between the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE Arca: SPY) and the iShares S&P 100 ETF (NYSE Arca: OEF). The spread reflects stock investors’ enthusiasm; it climbs as confidence grows and drops when conviction wanes.

Just before the article’s publication, SPY-OEF hit an all-time high, but as that spread ratcheted higher, we fretted about a divergence in another indicator that signaled wobbling in the large-cap sector.

And now we find ourselves here. The SPY-OEF spread slipped off the worry wall, breaking its uptrend line on March 12 and leaving us to wonder just how bad the injury might be.

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Well, wonder no more. Technically, the spread’s got the potential to retrace all the way back to $70, a level not visited since 2012. Historically, that translates to a 1,300 reading for the S&P 500. Oh, there are more than a few intermediate steps to stumble over to get down there—IF it gets down there—but that’s a discussion for a later date.

If that wasn’t enough to worry about, there’s another spread that just made a breakout move. Go back to August to recall the warning signs of a flip in the Treasury market. Back then, we were looking at the formation of a symmetrical triangle in the TIP-IEF chart. If you subtract the market price of the iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (NYSE Arca: IEF) from that of the iShares TIPS Bond ETF (NYSE Arca: TIP) you get a mirror-reversed characterization of the TIPS spread—a yield premium commonly commanded by conventional Treasury notes over inflation-protected notes of similar maturity.

Last week’s market rout set the stage for a downside break from the pattern, making IEF atypically more expensive than TIP. IEF is now threatening to become even pricier—by a margin of $19 or so. If you’re looking at the chart below, that means the spread could trade at quadruple its present discount. Barring exogenous events, IEF’s on a course to ascend to the $146-$147 level from its present $118 cost.

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The White House declaration of a national emergency on Friday sparked a relief rally, nudging the SPY-OEF spread up $10 and squeezing the TIP-IEF discount by more than a $1. Despite these sanguine results, another key indicator—the XLY/XLP ratio—continued to deteriorate. We’ve often looked to the quotient of the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSE Arca: XLY) over the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSE Arca: XLP) to gauge consumer confidence. On Friday, the ratio slipped another 4 basis points towards a test of the ratio’s decade-long uptrend line.

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Given the domestic economy’s dependence on consumer spending, the course taken by this indicator is a critical tell-tale of the business cycle and warrants continuous monitoring.

Disclosure: None.

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