Bespoke’s “ETF Trends” tool is one of our most popular products available to Bespoke Premium and Bespoke Institutional members.  Our ETF Trends tool helps investors find available ETFs to purchase (or sell) across asset classes.  More importantly, our proprietary Trend and Timing scores help investors determine whether the timing is right based on each ETF’s historical trading patterns.  Watch this tutorial video we made explaining how to make the most out of it.  To start using our ETF Trends tool now, start a 14-day free Premium or Institutional trial today!

Below is a snapshot of today’s “Regions” category from our ETF Trends tool.  Last week at this time, nearly every region of the world saw equity markets at overbought levels.  Today, though, pretty much every region is back in neutral territory after experiencing a pullback over the last five trading days.  Given that all of these ETFs are in long-term uptrends, a pullback from overbought to neutral levels triggers a “good” Timing score.

Click here to learn more about how to use our popular ETF Trends tool.

After hitting a 12-year high in October, sentiment in the services sector of the US economy pulled back a little more than expected in November.  While economists were expecting November’s ISM Non-Manufacturing report to pull back from 60.1 to 59.0, the actual reading came in even weaker at 57.4.  Taking this morning’s report and factoring in Thursday’s report on the Manufacturing sector, the combined ISM for November came in at 57.5 compared to 59.9 in October.

In a vacuum, the commentary section of this month’s report shows pretty widespread optimism, but if you’ve been reading these sections of the report on a regular basis, things aren’t quite as overwhelmingly positive as they have been in recent months.

Finally, the internals of this month’s report were, like the headline reading, weak on a m/m basis.  As shown in the table below, the only components that showed a m/m increase in November were Inventories and Import Orders.  To the downside, the biggest declines were in Inventory Sentiment, New Orders, and Supplier Deliveries.  On a y/y basis, however, things still look very positive with Inventory Sentiment and Import Orders the only components that are down versus last November.

With the S&P 500 finishing November with a gain of 3.1% on a total return basis, the index saw its 13th straight month of gains.  That’s right.  Since last November’s election, US equities haven’t seen a down month, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.  With such continuous strength, the S&P 500’s total return over the last 12 months has been a gain of 22.9%, which is nearly double the historical average of 11.7%!

In the chart below, we have compared the S&P 500’s current one, two, five, ten, and twenty-year annualized total returns to their historical averages going back to the late 1920s.  In the short to intermediate term, returns have been consistently above average with both the two and five-year annualized returns of over 15% exceeding the historical average by around five percentage points per year.  Longer term, though, the impacts of the financial crisis and dot-com bust are still making their presence felt.  Over the last ten years, the S&P 500’s 8.3% annualized return trails the historical average by about two percentage points, while the twenty-year annualized return of 7.2% trails the historical average of 11.1% by a pretty wide margin.  The US equity market has obviously exited the dark ages of the early 2000s, but the scars, however faded they have become, are still there.  Only time can heal.