As equity market volatility has picked up, the American Association of Individual Investors’  weekly poll of sentiment has deteriorated.  Back in early January, bears were the second-lowest share of responses in the past decade.  Since then, however, they’ve seen their share of the poll tick up by about 13 percentage points.  While not at a very high level compared to recent years today, they are the highest since August of 2017. At the same time, investors who are indecisive about the market have seen their share of responses plunge.  As shown in the second chart below, investors reporting “Neutral” sentiment are down from 45.2% of responses to 32.7% of responses.

It was a big week for initial jobless claims. Versus economist expectations for 230,000, only 215,000 Americans filed initial claims for jobless benefits during the week of March 23rd.  That’s a new cycle low and the lowest since the week of January 26, 1973.  If claims drop 2,000 per week lower than their current levels, they’ll be back to a spot they haven’t hit in almost 50 years.  Given the huge rise in the number of people employed and the overall population in that time period, we’d say that’s a pretty staggering statistic!

The 4-week moving average of claims is a little bit higher than the current reading, and is still a bit above the record lows for that reading set two weeks ago at 221,500.  To return to that record low, claims would need to come in at 218k next week.

Finally, claims unadjusted for seasonality are down to 192,400. That compares with a recent average of over 310,000 for this week, and is the lowest NSA reading since the early 1970s.

Our amazing new Stock Seasonality Tool lets users track seasonality trends for any stock, ETF, index, or asset class over any time period throughout the year.  With the month of April starting up next week, we wanted to show how the various commodities ETFs have historically performed during the month.

The chart below is a direct snapshot from a search we ran in our Stock Seasonality Tool.  It shows the five best and worst performing commodities ETF during the month of April on a media basis over the last 12 years.  Natural gas has been in a downtrend for years now, but interestingly, UNG has been the best performing commodity ETF in April with a median gain of 3.57%.  Behind UNG is DBC, DJP, MOO, and DBE.  DBC and DJP are two broad commodity ETFs, while MOO tracks agribusiness.

On the downside, there are three commodity ETFs that have posted median declines in April over the last 12 years — Silver (SLV), Coffee (JO), and precious metals (DBP).  Silver (SLV) has been the worst performing commodity ETF in April over the last 12 years with a median decline of 3.05%.

Start a free trial to Bespoke Premium to begin using our Stock Seasonality Tool now.  You can track seasonal trends for all individual stocks and ETFs using the tool, and you can monitor up to five custom portfolios as well.