Bespoke’s Weekly Sector Snapshot — 1/4/24
Sentiment Signals Mixed
The S&P 500 has gotten off to a rocky start to the new year, but it hasn’t knocked down bullish sentiment yet. This week’s bullish sentiment reading from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) rose from 46.3% in the final week of 2023 up to 48.6% this week. That edges bullish sentiment back towards the multi-year high of 52.9% put in place two weeks ago and still leaves bullish sentiment over a full standard deviation above its historical average.
As for bearish sentiment, things are not as extended, though at 23.5%, the share of bears is still several percentage points lower than the historical average (31%).
That means the bull-bear spread is also still historically in favor of bulls with a 25 percentage point gap between the two.
Including other weekly sentiment surveys, the picture is a bit more muddled albeit still showing a bias towards bullishness. For starters, after its holiday hiatus, the Investors Intelligence survey posted its highest reading on bullish sentiment since November 2021. Conversely, this week’s reading in the NAAIM Exposure index tracking active managers’ equity exposure plummeted from a reading above 100 (meaning managers reported they were fully invested long) all the way down to 71. That is the lowest reading in the index since early November.
Chart of the Day – Global Policy Rates Still Rising
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 1/4/24 – Better Jobs Data
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“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy” – Isaac Newton
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Isaac Newton was born on this day in 1643, and markets appear to be celebrating his birthday with their rediscovery of gravity after last year’s rally in the final two months of the year. Analysts have also been getting in on the act as there have been as many downgrades of Apple (AAPL) in the first three trading days of the year (3) than there were in the entire fourth quarter of 2023.
Equity futures have been trading with a modestly positive bias this morning which marks a shift from the last two days where declines in Europe have pushed futures in the US lower. This morning’s economic slate includes the ADP Employment report which came in higher than expected at 164K versus forecasts for an increase of 115K. Jobless claims were also just released and on both an initial and continuing basis, the numbers were better than expected.
With a decline of 0.80% yesterday, the S&P 500 posted back-to-back declines of 0.50% or more to start the year for just the fifth time on record. Wasn’t the start of the year supposed to be strong? As we’ve noted in various seasonality analyses, while the S&P 500’s long-term performance in January has been strong, in more recent history that has not been the case. In any event, regarding the back-to-back declines, you have to go back to 2005 to find the last occurrence and the only three others were in 1980, 1991, and 2000.
In the table below we show the performance of the S&P 500 for the rest of January and the rest of the year in each of those four years. For the rest of January, the S&P 500 bounced back big in 1980 and 1991 and saw just modest declines for the rest of the month in 2000 and 2005. For the remainder of the year, performance varied widely as well. In both 1980 and 1991, the S&P 500 posted gains of more than 29% for the rest of the year while in 2000 it fell nearly 6% while in 2005, it rallied 5%.
A sample size of four is admittedly small, and the fact that there was no clear trend of performance going forward doesn’t shed much light on what to expect for the remainder of the year. Not only that, but whereas each of the declines this year were less than 1%, in each of the four other periods, the magnitude of the decline was much larger.
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A Whole Lot of Nothing at the Surface
The S&P 500 is still within 2% of its record closing high reached exactly two years ago today, but beneath the surface, there have been some big moves. The chart below shows a distribution of two-year returns for every S&P 500 stock that is currently in the index, and while there have been some big winners and losers over this period, the average component’s move has been just a modest decline of 0.54%. So while the S&P 500 is down 1.9% from its high, over that same period, the ‘average’ stock in the index is down even less. For all the talk over the last year about how narrow the market has been, over the last two years that hasn’t been the case.
In the tables below, we show the 25 best and worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the last two years. Starting with the winners, all of the stocks listed have rallied at least 63%, and there are another 14 stocks that are up over 50% that didn’t make the list. Perhaps what stands out most about the list of biggest winners is what stocks aren’t on it. As shown, only three Technology sector stocks (and no Communication Services sector stocks) made the list, and of those three, not even one has a market cap of more than $30 billion. The only mega-cap stock on the list is Eli Lilly (LLY), showing again how while mega-cap tech had a great 2023, on a ‘two-year stack,’ their performance has been unremarkable. While tech stocks weren’t well-represented on the list, Energy and Industrials filled the void with eight and six stocks, respectively.
Among the list of biggest losers over the last two years, 18 are down over 50% led lower by VF Corp (VFC) and Match Group (MTCH) which have both plummeted more than 70%. Both of these stocks now have market caps of less than $10 billion, and of the 25 names shown, only three (Paypal-PYPL, Estee Lauder-EL, and Pfizer-PFE) have market caps above $50 billion.
Daily Sector Snapshot — 1/3/24
Bespoke Market Calendar — January 2024
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Chart of the Day – 60/40 As Positively Correlated As Ever
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 1/3/24 – Blame Europe
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“There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day.” – Martin Luther
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It’s not for another month, but it’s starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day as futures are once again pointing to a lower open on the day. If you’re looking for a scapegoat, the other side of the Atlantic may be a good place to start. The charts below show overnight market action combining intraday trading in Asian and European markets along with US futures. The chart on the left shows overnight trading from Monday night into Tuesday while the chart on the right shows trading overnight into this morning. In each case, the pattern has been the same. Up until Europe opened, there wasn’t much going on, and while stocks on the continent briefly rallied to start the day, sellers quickly came in and overwhelmed any positive sentiment.
This morning in the US, several catalysts could either break the trend or accelerate it. At 10 AM, we’ll get the December ISM Manufacturing report which is expected to come in below 50 for the fourteenth straight month and is the longest streak in over 20 years. Along with that report, the release of JOLTS for November is expected to increase modestly after last month’s much weaker-than-expected report. Besides those two reports, we’ll get the FOMC minutes at 2 PM.
Yesterday may not have been an especially positive start to a year, but it probably wasn’t as bad as the headline declines in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq would suggest. While the Nasdaq’s 1.63% decline was the fourth worst start to a year for the index on record, and the S&P 500’s 0.57% decline was steep in its own right, overall breadth on the S&P 500 was slightly positive (+19), and the equal-weighted S&P 500 was barely down on the day (-0.03%).
At the sector level, things weren’t so bad either. You probably wouldn’t believe it, but four sectors rallied over 1% and two other sectors were up on the day. Outside of Technology (-2.62%) and Industrials (-1.01%), no other sector ETF declined more than 1% on the day.
Yesterday’s best-performing sector was Health Care as the sector ETF rallied 1.76%. While the sector was a big laggard in 2023, it appears to be making up for lost time in the new year as the stock convincingly broke out above the upper end of its 2023 trading range.
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