The breakout in rates, combined with the bid to USD, strength from Oil, and the persistence from Gold, all conspired as motivation to tactically raise our guard over recent weeks. But one of the more difficult pursuits in this business is differentiating between a modest corrective phase vs. the start of something more sinister.
Our base case is that this near-term weakness should be viewed as the former, but we’re incrementalists and always on guard for challenges to that thinking. About 45% of the S&P traded to a 1-month low last week, just shy of the 50-60% zone that the good tradeable lows often start to take shape.
With election year seasonality not really helping, it’s likely early to fully lean into weakness yet. If something nastier is out there – e.g., if the moves in rates or Oil are going to start to hit the economy – we’d expect to see it manifest through leadership changes.
The persistent strength from the Discretionary vs. Staples pair has been a feature in our work for the last 15 months – it’s pausing here, but not breaking down. Industrials also went out last week at fresh relative performance highs. The only subtle shift we see is from the Utilities – our curiosity is always piqued when higher bond yields is accompanied by relative outperformance from Utes… recently, that’s quietly been the case and it bears watching.
Globally, U.K. equities broke out last week – propelled by the strength coming from the Basic Resource and Energy groups.
Source: Strategas
Chart reflects price changes, not total return. Because it does not include dividends or splits, it should not be used to benchmark performance of specific investments. Data provided by Refinitiv.
Sincerely,
Fortem Financial
(760) 206-8500
team@fortemfin.com
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