Yes, everyone is enamored with the big-cap tech stocks. It's easy to be in love with stocks that go up every day, or at least don't go down.
But do you remember a few short months ago when everyone loved oil stocks? Or the copper stocks? Or the industrials? Or what I refer to as the cyclical stocks (no one uses that term anymore, perhaps because I've heard recently that the business cycle is no longer boom and bust, so how can a stock be cyclical?)
Wednesday looked at U.S. Steel (X) , which is essentially falling off the bottom of the page. We looked at the banks and Boeing (BA) as well. But have you looked at what I affectionately call "the animals" lately? That would be Caterpillar (CAT) and Deere (DE) -- they both made their highs nearly three months ago.
Then there is energy. The (XLE) is down on the year. About the only good thing we can report is it's got some support not much lower than here.
The China trade deal is supposed to help farmers and grains, so why is Nutrien (NTR) , a fertilizer company, threatening to make new lows?
I know the semis are the new economically sensitive group. I am told this all the time. And quite frankly the tech stocks are where it's at. But for some reason, so are the defensive names like Pepsi (PEP) or Kellogg (K) . Yet, no one loves them very much.
I don't know why investors have shunned certain groups and glommed onto others, but the bifurcation is amazing. And it's problematic to me. I'm not saying every group has to perform all together all at once, but there are too many haves vs. have nots in the last few weeks.
What this market has typically done is, as soon as these divergences become too great, they start to rally the down and outers, which has kept the group rotation alive and well. Perhaps that will happen again, but something has to change. Right now too much money is pouring into the haves and out of the have nots.
The curiosity is that it hasn't found its way into the statistics much. Breadth has lagged, but only for the last three days. The new highs have dropped off, but not significantly. The new lows have picked up a bit in the last few days and the 10-day moving average is starting to rise again for this metric.
A proper correction would be healthy since it would reset the sentiment and shake out some of those weak hands. So far, we have not been able to accomplish that. But that doesn't mean it's not happening underneath. Because those charts above show us it is.
