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While the US stock market (S&P 500) is up 10% year-to-date heading into today’s trading, the Russian stock market is now up 5x more on the year at +51.8%.  Check out the year-to-date performance chart of the two countries below.  As shown, Russia has exploded higher since Trump was elected, but even heading into the election, the country was significantly outperforming the US.

Below is a look at our trading range screen for the 30 largest country ETFs traded on US exchanges.  For each ETF, the dot represents where it’s currently trading within its normal range, while the tail end represents where it was trading one week ago.  The black vertical “N” line represents each ETF’s 50-day moving average, and moves into the red or green zones are considered overbought or oversold.

If you’re a US investor buying these country ETFs looking to gain international exposure, you’ve got to be aware that movements in the US dollar will make it so that you’re not getting the same performance as you’d get if you were say a domestic German investor buying the German stock index.  If the US dollar gains against the euro while you own the Germany ETF (EWG), it’s going to hurt your EWG performance.

The reason we’re bringing up the dollar’s impact on these ETFs is because the dollar has surged since Trump was elected, and as a result, the average performance of these 30 country ETFs since the close on Election Day is actually a decline of 2.6%.  As shown, while Russia (RSX) is up 13.5%, the next best performing country ETFs since Election Day are Canada (EWC) at +4.6%, Italy (EWI) at +5.96%, and the US (SPY) at +5.5%.  Most country ETFs are either flat or down, however, and at this point, only a handful remain in “overbought” territory.  Countries like Brazil (EWZ), China (ASHR), and Hong Kong (EWH) are now oversold.

Yesterday we published a B.I.G. Tips report looking at Fed rate hikes after long pauses that actually throws a splash of cold water on the thesis that equity prices are set to surge even further.  If you’re not yet a member, you can sign up for one month of Bespoke Premium at this page to see the report ahead of today’s FOMC announcement.  It’s an actionable piece of analysis.  With today being a Fed Day, below is a breakdown of the S&P 500’s performance on Fed Days by month since 1995.  As shown, the S&P 500 has historically averaged a gain of 0.34% on all Fed Days, but the index has done even better on the 22 December Fed Days we’ve seen over the last 20+ years.  The S&P has averaged a gain of 0.48% on December Fed Days with positive returns 71% of the time.

December Fed Days have historically been slightly more volatile than normal as well.  The average absolute change for the S&P on all Fed Days since 1995 has been +/-0.88%, but December Fed Days have seen an average absolute change of +/-1.05%.

Looking at the table, you’ll see that February has historically been the only month where the S&P has averaged a decline on Fed Days, but there have only been six February Fed Days since 1995.  August Fed Days have been the most bullish, with the S&P averaging a one-day gain of 0.62%.

Once again, if you’re not yet a member, sign up for one month of our Bespoke Premium service to have a look at our more in-depth FOMC analysis.

Each month, Bespoke runs a survey of 1,500 US consumers balanced to census.  In the survey, we cover everything you can think of regarding the economy, personal finances, and consumer spending habits.  We’ve now been running the monthly survey for more than two years, so we have historical trend data that is extremely valuable, and it only gets more valuable as time passes.  All of this data gets packaged into our monthly Bespoke Consumer Pulse Report, which is included as part of our Pulse subscription package that is available for either $39/month or $365/year.  We highly recommend trying out the service, as it includes access to model portfolios and additional consumer reports as well.  If you’re not yet a Pulse member, click here to start a 30-day free trial now!

Below we highlight the results of a question we ask regarding shopping at retailers for home improvement items, which is just one of literally hundreds of data points included in each monthly report.  Unlike much of our online retailers data, brick and mortar retailers (specifically those selling home improvement items) have recently seen stiffer competition with a tighter distribution among the top three retailers (Home Depot, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart).  However, there still seems to be a hierarchy among which are the most and least popular.  Home Depot (HD) consistently stands above the rest followed by Lowe’s (LOW) and Wal-mart (WMT), while laggerds in this space include Target (TGT) and Sears (SHLD).  It is also worth noting that for the most part these retailers typically move in the same direction from month to month.  In this most recent survey, we saw decreases in shopping for home improvement items across the board as the busy holiday season forces home-owners to spend elsewhere and hold off or pause their home improvement projects.

Our full November Pulse report has additional research on sales and activity, including data on groups like consumer electronics (AAPL, MSFT, etc.), social media (FB, TWTR, LNKD), streaming media (NFLX, AMZN), and much more.  If you’re not yet a Pulse member and want to see the full report, click here to start a 30-day free trial now!

Get Bespoke’s 2017 Outlook Report with a 30-day free trial to Bespoke’s premium research!  Click here to learn more.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has now closed in “overbought” territory (more than one standard deviation above its 50-day moving average) for 24 consecutive trading days, which is also the number of trading days we have seen since Election Day.  Below is a chart showing consecutive “overbought” closes for the Dow since the current bull market began back on March 9th, 2009.  As shown, while 24 consecutive “overbought” days is one of the longer streaks we’ve seen over the last 8 years, there have actually been 9 streaks that have gone on longer.

While the Dow’s current streak of consecutive “overbought” days is only the 10th longest streak of the bull market at the moment, it’s likely going to last quite a bit longer because of just how extended the index still is.  Below is a chart showing the number of standard deviations that the Dow has traded above or below its 50-DMA on a daily basis since March 2009.  As shown, the post-election surge recently took the index to its most overbought level of the entire bull market when it crossed above three standard deviations.  Even through yesterday, the Dow was still more than 2.25 standard deviations above its 50-DMA, so it’s now going to take either a significant drop or a multi-week period of sideways trading for the index to move from “overbought” back to “neutral.”  One way or the other, though, this streak will end.