The S&P 500 has pressed ever closer to a new all-time high, but as we noted last week, sentiment remains fairly muted.  Historically, when the S&P 500 has been at or within 1% of an all-time high bullish sentiment has sat around an average of 40%. Bearish sentiment, on the other hand, has typically been around 25.5%. With the S&P 500 less than a tenth of a percent away from its February 19th closing high today, bullish sentiment from AAII stands at 30.04%; roughly 10 percentage points away from what could be expected when the S&P 500 is so close to an all-time high. Although bullish sentiment is lower than might be normal for where the S&P trades, it did pick up considerably week over week, rising 6.75 percentage points in what was the largest single weekly increase since March 5th when it rose by 8.31 percentage points. Even after that increase, though, bullish sentiment was higher less than a month ago (July 16th).

Again, historically bearish sentiment has only been just over 25% when the S&P 500 is close to all-time highs.  That is far from the case today as 42.12% of respondents in AAII’s survey reported as bearish.  Conversely to bullish sentiment, though, bearish sentiment fell 5.48 percentage points.  That was the largest week over week decline since May 21st’s 5.59 percentage point decline, leaving bearish sentiment at its lowest level since June 11th.

Those moves in bullish and bearish sentiments led the bull-bear spread to be cut in half, rising from -24.31 to -12.08.  That is the most the spread has climbed in a single week since February when it rose from -1.35 to 14.93.  Despite that large move, the spread still favors bears as the record streak of negative readings lives on. The bull-bear spread is now at its highest reading since June 11th.

Meanwhile, neutral sentiment was slightly lower, dropping 1.27 percentage points to 27.84%.   That only leaves it at its lowest level since July 23rd. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.

Look closely at the list of the top 25 performing S&P 500 stocks since last Thursday’s close and tell us what’s wrong with it?  Do you see it?  Keep looking, you’ll figure it out.  Yup. That’s it!  Not a single one of the 25 best performing stocks over the last week is from the Technology sector.  In looking through the list of names, it’s littered with stocks that were left for dead at varying points in the last several months.  FedEx (FDX) is up nearly 18%.  Casinos and cruise ships have been collecting dust and rust for the last five months, but the stocks of MGM and Royal Caribbean (RCL) are the second and third best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 over the last week.

Not only are there no stocks from the Technology sector in the top 25, but there aren’t even any in the top 50.  To find a Tech sector stock on the list, you have to go all the way down to spot number 70 where Xerox (XRX) sits with its gain of 6.73%.  Yeah.  We were surprised too.  Not only is XRX still a public company, but it’s considered a tech stock.

If you want to find a lot of stocks from the Technology sector, they are on the list of the 25 worst performers since last Thursday.  Of the 25 names listed below, 12 are from the Technology sector.  Not only that, but even many of the non-tech stocks listed like Illumina (ILMN), Netflix (NFLX), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Marketaxess (MKTX), Electronic Arts (EA), and Hologic (HOLX) have very high tech characteristics behind their businesses.  Like what you see?  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional for full access to our research and interactive tools.

This morning’s release of initial jobless claims marked the first time that claims were below 1 million since the week ending March 13th (21 weeks).  Jobless claims fell 228K to 963K compared to expectations of a much smaller drop to only 1.1 million from 1.19 million last week.  This week’s 228K decline was a slightly smaller drop than the prior week’s 244K decline but remains a much larger improvement than what was observed through most of June and July. Overall, claims are certainly on the right track with the first sub-1 million milestone now in the bag, but the 963K initial claims filed in the past week is still a historically elevated level higher than anything observed prior to the pandemic.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, this was actually the second week that claims were below 1 million with last week’s reading of 988.3K and this week’s 831.9K.  This decline comes with the seasonal tailwind that claims typically decline from early July through September.

Continuing claims are echoing the continued improvements in labor data with another decline of 604K this week bringing the seasonally adjusted number to 15.486 million. That leaves continuing claims at the lowest level since the first week of April.  Again, as is the case with initial claims, continuing claims remain historically high but are headed in the right direction.

Not only is the headline number of claims improving but so are claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).  Initial claims by this measure fell from 0.66 million to 0.49 million this week. These are some of the lowest readings since the program began in mid-April. That brings the total between NSA claims and PUA claims to 1.32 million. While lagged an additional week, continuing claims for the week ending July 24 (26.6 million) were the lowest since April 24th, and for PUA claims in particular, it was the lowest reading since the end of May. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.

Today marked 100 trading days since the Nasdaq 100’s March 20th COVID Crash closing low.  Below is a chart showing the rolling 100-trading day percentage change of the Nasdaq 100 since 1985.  The 59.8% gain over the last 100 trading days ranks as the 3rd strongest run on record.  The only two stronger 100-day rallies ended in January 1999 and March 2000.

While the Nasdaq 100 bottomed on Friday, March 20th, the S&P 500 bottomed the following Monday (3/23).  This means tomorrow will mark 100 trading days since the S&P 500’s COVID Crash closing low.  Right now the rolling 100-day percentage change for the S&P 500 sits at +46.7%.  But if the S&P manages to trade at current levels tomorrow, the 100-day gain will jump above 50%.  It has been 87 years (1933) since we’ve seen a 100-day gain of more than 50%!  Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options for our best research available.

Friday is just about everyone’s favorite day of the week, but for both the entire year and since March 23rd, the best days for the S&P 500 have been Monday and Wednesday.  On a YTD basis, the S&P 500’s median gain on Mondays has been 0.70% while Wednesday’s median gain has been 0.50%.  Outside of those two days, Tuesdays and Thursdays have been modestly positive, while Friday is the only day of the week that has seen declines on a median basis.

Looking just at the period since 3/23, Mondays and Wednesdays have still been the strongest with median gains of 0.73% and 0.71%, respectively.  Behind those two weekdays, Fridays have seen improved performance with a median gain of 0.34% followed by Tuesday (0.17%) and Thursday (0.00%).  What’s notable about the nearly five months since the 3/23 low is that every day of the week has seen gains on a median basis.

In terms of consistency, Mondays have been the most positive day of the week both on a YTD basis and since the March lows.  Since the March low, Wednesday and Friday have both seen gains two-thirds of the time, and while Monday through Thursday have seen similar levels of consistency whether you look on a YTD basis or since the March lows, Friday has had a pretty wide disparity.  In the period from late January through late March, investors did little in the way of buying on ‘Corona Fridays’ ahead of the weekend, but once the initial panic of the outbreak began to subside in April, that sentiment started to fade. Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options for our best research available.