The Closer — New Homes Soar, Peso Wants More — 3/23/17
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Looking for deeper insight on global markets and economics? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we review existing home sales and the performance of the Mexican peso.
The Closer is one of our most popular reports, and you can sign up for a free trial below to see it!
The Closer is one of our most popular reports, and you can see it and everything else Bespoke publishes by starting a no-obligation 14-day free trial to our research!
Chart of the Day: Advance Disposal Services (ADSW)
Checking Up on Internals
With equities surging to start the month of March and drifting lower ever since, questions over whether the March 1st rally marked some sort of last gasp peak have grown increasingly common. Whenever we get questions like this, our first inclination is to look at the market’s internals to see whether a new high in the index was confirmed by the performance of individual stocks in the index. In a B.I.G. Tips report sent out to subscribers earlier, we provided a detailed look at two key breadth measures we’ve found to be extremely useful over the years in terms of measuring the health of the market. To see the results of this must-see analysis, sign up for a monthly Bespoke Premium membership now!
Bespokecast — Episode 8 — PJ Gorynski
In our newest conversation on Bespokecast, we speak with Bespoke Market Intelligence co-founder PJ Gorynski. PJ runs Bespoke’s primary research business, conducting consumer and business surveys for institutional clients that offer insight into the trends and drivers of businesses. In our wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how clients use Bespoke’s survey data to see deeper into business models, also discussing the state of the hedge fund industry and specific names covered in PJ’s research including Chipotle (CMG), GameStop (GME), Snapchat (SNAP), and Volkswagen (VLKAY). The Queens native also gives us some insight into the best pizza in New York and the agony of New York Mets fandom. We hope you enjoy the conversation!
To access episode 8 immediately, please start a 14-day free trial to Bespoke’s research product. If you’ve already signed up for a Bespoke free trial in the past, you can gain access by choosing a membership option at our products page. Here’s a look at past guests if you’re interested.
Bespoke’s Sector Snapshot — 3/23/17
We’ve just released our weekly Sector Snapshot report (see a sample here) for Bespoke Premium and Bespoke Institutional members. Please log-in here to view the report if you’re already a member. If you’re not yet a subscriber and would like to see the report, please start a 14-day trial to Bespoke Premium now.
Below is one of the many charts included in this week’s Sector Snapshot, which highlights our trading range screen for the S&P 500 and ten sectors. The black vertical “N” line represents each sector’s 50-day moving average, and as shown, three sectors — Energy, Financials, and Telecom — are now below their 50-days. Only three sectors — Consumer Staples, Technology, and Utilities — remain overbought. (The red zone is considered overbought territory, while the green zone is considered oversold territory.)
To see our full Sector Snapshot with additional commentary plus six pages of charts that include analysis of valuations, breadth, technicals, and relative strength, start a 14-day free trial to our Bespoke Premium package now. Here’s a breakdown of the products you’ll receive.
ETF Trends: US Sectors & Groups – 3/23/17
Treasuries continued to gain, with Mexico, gold, and Japanese yen also rallying. Stronger yen means weaker equity prices in Japan most of the time, helping to push DXJ down. Banks and brokers are all over the top of the list of worst performers, with solar, steel, and oil stocks also in pain.
Bespoke provides Bespoke Premium and Bespoke Institutional members with a daily ETF Trends report that highlights proprietary trend and timing scores for more than 200 widely followed ETFs across all asset classes. If you’re an ETF investor, this daily report is perfect. Sign up below to access today’s ETF Trends report.
See Bespoke’s full daily ETF Trends report by starting a no-obligation free trial to our premium research. Click here to sign up with just your name and email address.
the Bespoke 50 — 3/23/17
Every Thursday, Bespoke publishes its “Bespoke 50” list of top growth stocks in the Russell 3,000. Our “Bespoke 50” portfolio is made up of the 50 stocks that fit a proprietary growth screen that we created a number of years ago. Since inception in early 2012, the “Bespoke 50” has beaten the S&P 500 by 35 percentage points. Through today, the “Bespoke 50” is up 107.5% since inception versus the S&P 500’s gain of 72.1%. Always remember, though, that past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
To view our “Bespoke 50” list of top growth stocks, sign up for Bespoke Premium ($99/month) at this checkout page and get your first month free. This is a great deal!
Individual Investors Buying on Weakness
With bulls failing to reach a majority in the weekly AAII sentiment poll for a record 116 straight weeks, one would think that the sell-off earlier this week would have sent bullish investors scrambling like a bunch of cockroaches. The reality was somewhat different, though. In this week’s survey, bullish sentiment actually ticked higher, rising from 31.17% up to 35.28%. True, that’s barely even a third of the total, but given the fragile state of investor sentiment, it is not what we would have expected.
Bearish sentiment saw an even larger move in the opposite direction. As shown in the chart below, bearish sentiment declined from 38.7% down to 30.5%. That’s the lowest weekly reading since early February, the largest one-week decline since early October, and the largest two-week decline since February 2016. That’s quite a thaw in the bearish camp!
Jobless Claims ‘Spike’
When it comes to weekly jobless claims reports these days, everything is relative. Therefore, after seven straight weeks where jobless claims came in below 250K and 106 straight weeks where claims were below 300K, a weekly increase of 15K is a relatively big move. In this week’s report, claims rose from 243K up to 258K. That’s 18K above the consensus estimate and the highest weekly print since January 20th.
With this week’s ‘spike’ in claims, the four-week moving average ticked up by 4K to 243.25K, which is the highest reading for this measure since 2/10.
On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, jobless claims increased by less than 3K to 225.1K. For the current week of the year, that’s below the average of 324.3K going back to 2000 and the lowest print since 1973.
