According to Bloomberg data, the modest year-to-date increase in the S&P 500 is attributable to health care and retail alone. Worse yet, the two industry segments trade at a 20% premium to the market at large. Paying a premium for growth is one thing. Chasing a handful of momentum stocks is another.
Brokerage firm Jones Trading sharpened the knife even further, noting that six corporations account for more than the entirety of the meager 2015 gains in the S&P 500. Those companies? Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Gilead, Google and Walt Disney Co. The narrowing of the market itself coupled with the types of businesses on the list (with the possible exception of Walt Disney) strongly resembles late 1990s euphoria.
What happens when one examines the S&P 500 on an equal-weighted basis? We find that that stocks have been stuck in one of the tightest trading ranges in market history for as long as the Federal Reserve ended quantitative easing (“QE3″). Here is the performance of the Guggenheim Equal Weight S&P 500 ETF (RSP) since QE3 wrapped up at the end of October in 2014.
The ongoing deterioration in the S&P 500’s Bullish Percentage Index (BPI) underscores the challenges that investors face. Do they chase the Googles and the Gileads? Do they look for value in the energy patch through acquiring beaten down exchange-traded proxies like SPDR Sector Select Energy (XLE)? Or do they recognize that 50% of the S&P 500 components are currently in downtrends – a demarcation that is unfavorable for the long-term sustainability of the 3rd longest bull in history.
Clearly, there is a dichotomy between the health of the overall stock market and the relatively high price of the popular benchmarks. Addressing the internal components of major benchmarks like the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrials, NYSE Composite or NASDAQ as they relate to the handful of momentum leaders in those benchmarks leaves one to ponder what will happen next. Will the weight of the overall market crush the Atlas-like performance of health and retail? On the flip side, is it possible that underachieving sectors like industrials, materials, energy, utilities, transports and telecom might join the winner’s circle?
Unfortunately, history suggests that overvalued sectors tend to crumble and join the beleaguered areas, as opposed to the troubled spots catching a bid first. Indeed, the last time that the New York Stock Exchange’s Advance Decline Line (A/D) Line fell below a 200-day moving average, the broader S&P 500 fell more than 19%. It occurred in July of 2011 as the euro-zone crisis had been spiraling out of control.