Market Action

March market action surprised many observers. The market recorded a gain for the month. To many it had appeared an intermediate correction (or worse) was underway. But instead of breaking the February lows, the stock market bounced.

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A performance run down for our equity market sectors ranked by March performance.

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In mid-March, the bond market was jolted by a nasty PPI number and spent the rest of the month creeping back to pre-PPI release levels. The net result was an unchanged to slightly higher bond market in March.

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Did February mark the beginning of a 7%-10% intermediate stock market correction? I don’t think so. The market gave up some ground last month, but not much and it caused very little deterioration in our indicators.

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In February, stocks and bonds tracked the same course. The CRB Index came down significantly in February and was close to breaking down before a late month surge. The JOC Index remains above its January breakout level.

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After a 300-point move in the DJIA in a little over two months, a number of observers view the market as “overbought”. However, we see no significant evidence among our indicators that supports this opinion.

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For the month of January, the S&P 500 gained 7.1% and the DJIA was up 8%. The Russell 2000, a good measure of secondary stocks, gained a lagging 4.4%. Not much beat the DJIA in January.

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For the month of November, the S&P 500 lost 1.9%, with the DJIA down 1.6%. The Russell 2000 (a good measure of secondary issues) was down 3.6%. Blue chip growth groups and Utilities tended to dominate the leaders along with Airlines.

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For the month of October, the S&P 500 gained 2.6%, with the Value Line Composite down 0.1% and the DJIA up 1.7%. Cyclical and blue chip growth groups tended to dominate the leaders while secondary technology oriented groups were concentrated toward the bottom of the list.

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For the month of September, the S&P 500 gained 4.0%, with the Value Line Composite up 2.9% and the DJIA up 4.0%. Consumer related, growth, and blue chip groups dominated the leaders list last month.

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About two thirds of the sectors beat the S&P 500 and DJIA in August (by not going down as much). Secondary stocks, as a class, also went down less than the big stock averages.

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Not many sectors beat the S&P 500 and DJIA in July. Secondary stocks lagged in the month end rally. For the month, only five of our indices registered gains. But there were not any very big losers either.

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Perhaps the healthiest thing of all about June in Wall Street was that nobody got very excited about it. The bearish contingent has backed off a bit, but I sure don’t see many charging bulls...not even very many sauntering bulls.

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Technology jumped back up to a position of market leadership in June with eight of our technology or technology dominated sectors were up 8% or more, compared to the 4.3% gain for the S&P 500. However, Airlines led the parade with a 13% gain.

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The stock market did make a new low in May, a wimpy move below the twin lows of March and April. There was a lot of misery and retching on the part of professionals and technical types, but nothing much happened. Then our Early Warning Index of intermediate bottoms registered a buy signal.

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Not much happened in May and the market has surged these first three trading days of June. May action is now very old news. Maybe you should just skip this section this month.

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It was a very dull month in our world of sectors, just as it was for the stock market as a whole.

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February was an outstanding month for many secondary stocks and sectors. Our Emerging Growth quantitative theme turned in the best performance. Smaller technology stocks also did very well, but so did a number of growth consumer issues.

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Outside of the 10% move in 30-year zeros (premium widened), the bond market in February was a quiet affair. In terms of the bond market, it was a good month to be on vacation. I didn't miss much.

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For a change, the Value Line Index and the NASDAQ performed better than the S&P 500 and DJIA. Inflation beneficiaries, High Yield groups and Value stocks did relatively well. Big Growth stocks (especially Drugs) performed poorly. Small technology stocks were also beat up again.

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