The S&P 500 is cutting back on some of its losses today as the index is up around 0.4% as of this writing. From a technical perspective, the S&P 500 is currently around similar levels to the June highs, but other than that there is no clear technical support. High yield bonds are another story. Investors often turn to credit markets for confirmation of moves the equities, and while earlier this week credit spreads were ripping higher to confirm the drop in equities, the high-yield bond ETF (HYG) is showing a more promising sign for bulls today. As shown below, HYG has pulled back 3.33% from its high less than two weeks ago, but over the past three sessions, that decline has been paused as the ETF has found support at its 50-DMA (which has also begun to trend sideways).  That is the reverse of what has frequently been observed in the past year as the 50-DMA has gone from resistance to support. At multiple points throughout the past year, the 50-DMA frequently marked a stopping point in short-term rallies. This week, the opposite has appeared to be the case.  Click here to learn more about Bespoke’s premium stock market research service.

It is no secret that 2022 has not exactly been the year of the 60/40 portfolio.  This year has left nothing safe with both stocks and bonds hit hard.  Both are in the red by 10%+ on a year to date basis headed into the final week of August.  In the charts below, we show the year to date total returns of the S&P 500 (y-axis) and the year to date total returns of various ICE Bank of America bond indices (x-axis) through August for each year going back to their respective inceptions (each index began in 1973 except for high yield which began in 1987). No matter which way you cut it, 2022 has been the worst year of the past half century for stocks and bonds combined.

With the S&P 500 down a little over 12% YTD, aggregate bonds (government and corporate bonds combined) are only around one percentage point better. For the comparable time of the year, the only years that also have seen both bonds and stocks sitting on a loss through August were 1973, 1974, and 1981.  The same applies for government bonds. The corporate investment grade bond index has a bit more variety of years with stocks and bonds falling in 1974, 1981, 2008, and 2015. Again though, none of those other years have seen as sharp of a decline as 2022, and the S&P 500’s drop in the same time also ranks as one of the worst. 2022 is the only year that the high yield bond index has fallen simultaneously with stocks, however as we noted earlier, it does not have as long of a history as those other categories. Click here to learn more about Bespoke’s premium stock market research service.

In last Thursday’s Chart of the Day, we highlighted how important dividends are for long-term investment performance. While dividends do help to boost investment returns over the long term, in the short term there is often an ebb and flow of dividend-focused ETFs under and outperforming in terms of price moves. For example, up until June, the S&P 500’s highest yielders measured by the SPDR S&P 500 High Dividend Yield ETF (SPYD) had mostly been trading in the green whereas the S&P 500 (SPY) was deep in the red.

With equities broadly taking a turn lower over the past week, SPYD has held up relatively well when compared to the S&P 500 (SPY).  Even though SPYD has not avoided declines (as we also showed in our decile analysis, the highest dividend payers have only slightly better performance than non-dividend payers), the relative strength line of SPYD versus SPY has broken out of the past couple of months’ downtrend.  That being said, it has not been a sharp move higher like what was observed in the first half of the year, particularly in the second quarter. In other words, the highest yielders are back to outperforming the broader market but not to the same extent as earlier in the year. Click here to learn more about Bespoke’s premium stock market research service.