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While sentiment on the part of individual investors definitely has seen an uptick since the election, in the last two weeks the positive momentum has stalled.  In this week’s sentiment survey from AAII, individual investor bullish sentiment saw a very slight decline, falling from 43.78% down to 43.12%.  While the move was extremely small, optimism is still down over six percentage points from where it was two weeks ago even as equities have been rallying to record highs.  While you may say that it’s perfectly natural for investors to become less positive as stocks become more expensive, that would mean that they would have had to become positive in the first place, and that has not been the case.  In fact, the last time more than half of individual investors were bullish was 101 weeks ago at the start of 2015.

Looking at pessimism, we have now seen two straight weekly increases in bearish sentiment from 22.08% up to 26.49%.  This is still low relative to recent history, and as shown in the chart below, the level of bearish investors remains below the uptrend that was broken to the downside three weeks ago.

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For all of the talk about the strong dollar in the last several days, one might be surprised to hear that today’s gain in the US Dollar Index is only the third up day since Thanksgiving (10 trading days).  Yes, this consolidation in the greenback comes after a big surge following the election, but it just illustrates how it isn’t just in politics where the rhetoric often differs from reality.  In the initial post-election surge, the US Dollar Index rallied nearly 4% – a huge move over such a short period of time – and broke out above resistance from its prior peaks in March and December 2015.  Since its high on 11/23, though, the greenback has been trading in a two-week consolidation phase.  During this period, though, it has managed to stay above its former highs, which acted as support from which it is bouncing today.

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To say that last month’s election was one of the most impactful Presidential elections in recent memory would be an understatement.  Sure, there were big moves in the market when President Obama was elected, but in the weeks that followed, stocks across different sectors all moved in the same direction (lower).  This time around, the rotation has been something to behold.  To illustrate this, in the charts below, we compare YTD performance ranks of the ten major sectors throughout 2016.

To start off, the biggest rotation we have seen is in Financials and Utilities.  Throughout most of 2016, Utilities, with their high yields, were the top-performing sector in the S&P 500.  Post-election, though, that leadership came crashing down, as the sector has gone from first to nearly worst in the span of four weeks.  The sector is still up 8.5% on the year, but that ranks as the fourth worst of the ten sectors.  In what has been a mirror image of Utilities, the Financial sector has gone from worst to nearly first over the same span.  With a gain of 21% on the year, the only other sector doing better YTD is Energy (23.5%).

While the magnitude of the shift has been smaller, Industrials and Technology have seen a similar shift in their YTD performance ranks.  As recently as late October, Technology was the second best performing sector YTD, but now ranks at just the sixth best.  Industrials, on the other hand, have moved from sixth best up to the third best.

Finally, while many sectors have seen big shifts in their YTD performance ranks, two sectors that have seen little impact in their ranks are Energy and Health Care.  The Energy sector was and continues to be the top performing sector, while Health Care has remained in the cellar.  Immediately after the election, Health Care (Drugs and Biotech more specifically) got a lift as Clinton’s loss was seen as a positive signal that these companies wouldn’t have a foe in the White House.  What the market failed to take into account, though, was that Trump’s rhetoric towards the sector hasn’t exactly been friendly – a theme that was reinforced in his Person of the Year interview in Time earlier on Wednesday.  When it comes to drug pricing, Health Care stocks don’t have many friends in DC on either side of the aisle right now.

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Below is an updated look at our global equity market trading range screen using 30 of the largest country stock market ETFs traded on US exchanges.  For each ETF, the dot represents where it’s currently trading within its 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.

When the dot is to the right of the tail, the ETF has upside momentum, and vice versa when the dot is to the left of the tail.  In regards to overbought/oversold levels, when prices move to extremes in either direction, we typically look for an eventual mean reversion.

While the US has been in rally mode since the election, not all countries have seen the same returns.  In fact, even after today’s big global rally, just 12 of the 30 country ETFs we track are in overbought territory.  And most countries just spiked into overbought territory Thursday, especially European ones.

Notably, the two most overbought countries in our screen are Italy (EWI) and Russia (RSX).  While Italy is still down 13% year-to-date, it’s now up 6.6% since the US election.  And Russia’s stock market (RSX) has more than doubled the gain that the S&P 500 (SPY) has seen since the election.

The worst two performing countries since the election are Mexico (EWW) and Brazil (EWZ).  While Brazil is down 11.35% since the election, it’s still up 61% year-to-date.  Mexico, on the other hand, is down 14.76% since the election and 9.7% year-to-date.

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 now, 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 concerns about job security.  This is one of literally hundreds of data points included in each monthly report.

Each month, we present the statement “I am concerned that I will lose my job” and ask consumers to rate their feelings from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 5 (Strongly Disagree).  In the chart below, we break out the responses from our November survey.  Here we see that more than half of respondents report little concern over losing employment, with only 18% concerned to any degree.

Want to see how this reading has trended over time?  If you’re not yet a Pulse member, click here to start a 30-day free trial and view our full November Pulse report.

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At one point this morning we looked up and saw the Dow up 130 points, but in percentage terms, the index was up just two-thirds of a percent.  With the Dow currently trading at 19,440, a triple-digit move just barely cracks a move of half a percent.  And if the Dow gets up to 20,000, obviously that means a 100-point gain translates into a move of exactly half a percent.  Yep, 100-point moves just aren’t what they once were.  “Back in the good ‘ole days, a 100-point move meant something.”

Below is a chart that shows the impact of a 100-point Dow move in percentage terms based on where the index is trading in price.  This is obviously common-sense stuff, but we thought it was worth posting given that the index is quickly approaching the 20,000 mark.  From a psychological perspective, a 100+ point Dow move still seems like a big gain or decline in the minds of most investors, but the reality is that at these levels, the index needs to move 200+ points to be categorized as a “big move.”  Over time the psychological adjustment will be made, but for now it’s likely that investors are viewing daily Dow point moves as more impactful than they really are.