It’s been a week to forget for global equity indices. In the charts below we chart local currency prices for indices in the US (S&P 500), Europe (Stoxx 600), Italy (FTSE MIB), Spain (IBEX 35), the UK (FTSE 100), Germany (DAX), Japan (Nikkei 225), and Australia (ASX 200). All are now below their 50-DMAs and the US is the only index hanging on to its 200-DMA. Adding to that technical damage are a number of death crosses. This bearish technical indicator is triggered when the 50-DMA passes below the 200-DMA when both are downward sloping. The Stoxx 600, FTSE 100, and DAX all fit this bill.

As if death crosses and moves below long-term averages weren’t enough, the Stoxx 600, IBEX 35, FTSE 100, and DAX are all at 52-week lows on a closing basis. The Nikkei closed the week with its second-largest decline since the 2016 US Presidential election, and US equities have dropped on 4 of 5 trading days in 3 of the past 4 weeks. The weakness of the price action across global equities is consistent and broad-based.

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It has been a pretty nutty week for the equity market over the last four days as sectors which had been holding things up have sold off sharply, while sectors that had been left for dead have been picking up a little bit of late.  The charts below show the relative strength of the S&P 500 Technology and Financial sectors. As usual, rising lines indicate that the sector is outperforming the S&P 500 and vice versa.  For much of 2018, these two sectors have been outperforming the rest of the market.  With the two sectors accounting for just about 40% of the entire S&P 500, their strength was enough to hold the rest of the market up.  This week, that has all changed, though, as both sectors are down around 4%.  For Technology, it hasn’t seen a downturn relative to the broader market that was this steep since late November, while the last decline of this magnitude for the Financial sector was in December.

So which sectors have been picking up the slack?  Well, of course, it’s the ones that everyone left for dead a few weeks ago.  The charts below show the relative strength of the Energy and Utilities sectors, and in both cases, the sectors sold off sharply to start the year, but with the broader market weakness, both sectors have gotten a lift – relatively speaking.  While the two have outperformed this week, they are still marginally lower.

One area of the market that has seen a big boost with all the tariff talk is small caps.  Despite Trump’s “America First” policies and rhetoric, the Russell 2000 has underperformed the S&P 500 over the course of President Trump’s time in office.  Ever since the President brought up the issue of tariffs, though, the Russell has rallied and is now up 3% in March compared to a 2% decline in the S&P 500.

With the S&P 500 swinging between positive and negative moves lately, sentiment on the part of individual investors has also been seeing its fair share of ups and downs.  According to the weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), bullish sentiment declined from 36.8% down to 33.2%.  That’s not much of a move, but it is below average and comes after a two-week stretch where it dropped close to 11 percentage points only to rise more than 10 percentage points the following week.  Basically, investors can’t make up their minds.

Bearish sentiment has been just as volatile.  Last week, bearish sentiment declined 7 percentage points to 21.33%.  This week it rose by 7 percentage points right back up to 28.5%.

Finally, neutral sentiment spiked back over 40% in the last two weeks, only to fall nearly 4 points this week to a still high 38.2%.