Jobless claims rose by 10K this week but still managed to come in slightly below consensus expectations (233K vs 235K).  Claims have now been below 300K for 138 straight weeks, which is the longest such streak since the early 1970s.  If Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria weren’t able to push claims above 300K, it’s hard to imagine what will.

With the recently low string of weekly prints, the four-week moving average continues to sink.  Even with this week’s 10K increase, the four-week moving average declined to 239.5K from 248.5K.  That now puts this metric within 4K of the multi-decade low of 235.5K we saw back in May.  Looking ahead to next week, as long as claims don’t increase by more than 8K, we should see a new low in the four-week moving average.

On a non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) basis, claims increased by 9.3K this week, but that is still well below typical levels for this time of year as the average reading for the current week of the year since 2000 is more than 110K higher at 325.75K.  To find a week where claims were lower than this week’s print at this time of year, you have to go all the way back to 1973.

In normal times a bullish sentiment reading of 40% wouldn’t be much of a big deal, but given the state of sentiment over the last several years, 40% is now considered an accomplishment.  In this week’s sentiment survey from AAII, bullish sentiment increased 1.7 percentage points up to 39.6%.  That represents a five-week high, but also a record 147 straight weeks where bulls have failed to be in the majority.

While bullish sentiment may have ticked higher, bearish sentiment surged 5.1 percentage points to a seven-week high of 33.0%.  33% may not sound like much and it is lower than the 39.6% bullish reading, but when you consider the fact that stocks have been hitting record highs on a seemingly daily basis, it represents a healthy degree of skepticism.

With both the bull and bear camps expanding this week, fence sitters plummeted, falling 6.8 percentage points down to 27.3%.  That was the largest weekly decline since August and is the lowest weekly reading since March.

US equity markets have been on a pretty epic run over the past few weeks, but today the major indices are finally pulling back a bit.  We’re seeing mean reversion in international equity markets as well.  You can see the pullback in our Country Trading Range Screen below.  The screen highlights where each of the 30 largest country ETFs (traded on US exchanges) are trading relative to their 50-day moving averages (the black vertical “N” line in the screen).  The dot represents where each ETF is currently trading relative to its range, while the tail end shows where it was trading a week ago.  A red dot means the ETF is down within its range over the last week, and vice versa for a green dot.

As you can see, there are only three green dots versus twenty-seven red dots, so we’ve pretty much seen across-the-board mean reversion for global equities over the last week.  There were twenty countries that were trading in overbought (OB) territory last week at this time, but now there are only nine.  And there are now seven countries in oversold territory versus just one last week.

Countries like Australia (EWA), Brazil (EWZ), Colombia (GXG), Hong Kong (EWH), the Philippines (EPHE), South Africa (EZA), and Switzerland (EWL) all broke below their 50-days over the last week.