The ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) got a strong start out the gate this year and was up over 25% YTD at its high on February 12th.  Since then the high flying momentum ETF has seen that strong performance wane as it currently sits on a 5% loss year to date. That is also not to say ARKK hasn’t rallied off of its recent lows. ARKK bottomed just over a month ago and has gone on to rally 17.5% since then.  Today alone it is up 3.2%.  While this momentum trade is bouncing back after a string of weakness, the opposite is true for value. The iShares S&P 500 Value ETF (IVE) has been on a steady rise higher all year and it is currently up 14.26% YTD, but that uptrend is now at risk as the ETF has reversed lower this month.  Today the ETF is down 1.3%, and when compared to ARKK, it is a historically wide divergence in the two ETFs’ daily performance.  In fact, the spread between the daily performance of ARKK and IVE is currently 4.55 percentage points.  That is the tenth highest level on record with the most recent higher reading being in March of this year. Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

Although there has not been any sort of dramatic breakout to the upside as the index has fallen over the past few days, the S&P 500 did manage to tag new record highs in the past week for the first time since May 10th.  The record-high milestone has done little to shift sentiment though. The AAII survey of individual investor sentiment saw its reading on bullish sentiment rise 0.9 percentage points to 41.1%.  While higher, that is still three points below the reading from just a couple of weeks ago.

The biggest move was in neutral sentiment as that reading fell 6.4 percentage points to 32.7%.  That is the lowest reading in over a month and marked the biggest drop in neutral sentiment since the week of April 8th. Even though that was a big drop, neutral sentiment remains slightly elevated versus the historical average (31.42%) and especially relative to what has been the norm over the past year.

The past couple of weeks have seen historically muted readings on bearish sentiment.  While that is still the case with this week’s readings remaining at the low end of its historical range, bearish sentiment saw a big 5.5 percentage point gain rising to 26.2%. That one-week uptick in bearish sentiment was the largest since last September. It also marked the first time since the end of last month that over a quarter of respondents reported as bearish. While the move was not nearly as large, the Investors Intelligence survey echoed that increase in bearish sentiment with the bull-bear spread in that survey falling from 38.3 to 37.8 after inverse moves in bullish and bearish sentiment. In other words, broadly speaking, optimism has appeared to have peaked for the time being.   Click here to view all of Bespoke’s membership options.

Initial jobless claims were forecasted to extend the streak of consecutive declines to seven this week with a 16K decline penciled in. Instead, claims unexpectedly rose by 36K to 412K.  Not only did this end a six-week streak of declines, but it was also the largest one-week increase since the last week of March bringing claims to the highest level in a month.  While higher sequentially, the overall trend of lower claims remains in place.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, regular state claims likewise rose back above 400K this week, although it was still one of the lowest readings of the pandemic.  PUA claims were also higher with the national total rising to 118K from 71.3K last week.  That increase comes in spite of the upcoming exit from the program by half of the country over the next month.  On a state level, the main contributors to that increase in PUA claims were Maryland (+17.89K), Kentucky (+8.59K), Illinois (+5.46K), and California (+5.26K).  Maryland interestingly is the only one of these states withdrawing from the pandemic era programs prior to the federal deadline of September. The state is currently scheduled to end support of the program in early July.

Following a substantial decline last week, continuing claims were relatively flat in the most recent week’s data.  Nationally, continuing claims rose 1K to 3.518 million for the first week of June.

Looking at the data on a non-seasonally adjusted basis and including all programs adds another week’s lag to the data making the most recent print through the last week of May.  Total claims across all programs have continued to fall, dipping below 15K for the first time in the most recent week’s data.  A 253.9K drop in PUA claims was the biggest contributor to that decline while regular state, extended benefits, and PEUC programs also all fell significantly.   Click here to view all of Bespoke’s membership options.

Besides the fact that crude oil is back above $70, what’s even more impressive is how it has gotten there.  In the process of breaking out above its February highs a couple of weeks back, the intraday high in WTI has been higher than the prior day’s intraday high for 14 straight trading days.

That type of persistent intraday bid in crude oil has been unprecedented.  Going back to 1983, the current streak ranks as the longest on record surpassing the prior record of 12 trading days that was reached in both 2003 and then again in 2011.  In the near 40 years since 1983, there have only been six other periods where WTI even saw a streak of ten trading days where its intraday high was higher than the day before.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.

Right at the midpoint of June, Biogen (BIIB) has been the top-performing Russell 1,000 stock month to date.  BIIB has rallied 48.08% thanks to a huge move higher earlier in the month when the company received the first approval from the FDA for their Alzheimer’s treatment. With only a couple of weeks since that massive move higher, the stock has pulled back from its highs but remains extremely extended above its 50-DMA.  Looking across the other top 20 best-performing stocks in the index, BIIB is far from being the only Health Care stock.  In fact, most of the best performers so far in June come from the Health Care, Tech, or Energy sectors.  Additionally, many of these other stocks have also soared well above their 50-day moving averages, although there are a couple of exceptions.

One of those is the second-best performer in the index: Iovance (IOVA).  IOVA is another Health Care stock that has experienced huge swings on news surrounding regulatory concerns.  In May, the FDA requested additional potency data from the company which was followed by an announcement that the CEO would be stepping down.  That sent the stock collapsing almost 40% on May 19th.  After a bit of sideways movement through the second half of May and into June, IOVA has nearly recovered those losses, but that still leaves the stock well below its 50-DMA and nearly cut in half YTD. Fastly (FLSY) and Rocket Cos (RKT), and NRG Energy (NRG) are the only other best performers that are also either below or within single-digit percentage points of their 50-DMAs even after the huge gains this month.

Looking at the other end of the performance spectrum, the 20 worst-performing stocks in the index, there are 11 that have fallen double digits in June. The worst of these is Upstart (UPST) which has fallen 17%. This month’s decline has brought UPST right back down to its 50-DMA whereas most of the other worst-performing stocks have fallen much further below their 50-DMAs. Granted, UPST is also the top-performing Russell 1,000 stock year to date having rallied over 200%, and it is up even more, 441.51%, since its first day of trading in mid-December.  Most of the other worst performers are also still up on the year, but not nearly to the same extent.  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.