A couple of weeks ago, we highlighted how the Tech sector has been the only sector whose relative strength has been in a strong uptrend for the entirety of the past year meaning it has outperformed the S&P 500. That is still very much the case, but other sectors have shown some interesting patterns.

Energy has gotten a lot of attention over the past several months for how badly it was beaten down during the bear market and crude oil’s rout a little later.  Despite that, it has actually outperformed the S&P 500 with its relative strength line rising since mid-March. Part of the reason for this is it has been more volatile, so the gains have been larger than other sectors while it is also still down substantially more YTD than other sectors. Materials is another laggard that seems to have seen its relative strength line versus the S&P 500 bottom roughly around the same time.

While those two sectors have turned things around by this measure, Financials and Industrials have found little respite.  Both sectors have seen a continued grind lower in their relative strength.  Consumer Staples, Utilities, and Real Estate are in a similar boat after these defensive sectors saw their outperformance begin to subside as the market rebounded.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our Daily Sector Snapshot and much more.

With equities continuing to rally, more and more stocks have been moving above their 50-DMAs.  As of yesterday’s close, 81.78% of stocks in the S&P 500 closed above their 50-DMAs.  That is the highest reading since January 17th of this year.  That’s a pretty impressive reading.  For example, even at the February 19th all-time high the reading wasn’t this high!  As for the individual sectors, Consumer Discretionary, Health Care, Financials, Industrials, Real Estate, Technology, and Utilities are all at their highest level by this measure since the start of the bear market. While not necessarily at new highs, the other sectors are similarly around some of their strongest readings of the past few months.

For most of the new bull market, Health Care has been a leader in having the largest share of stocks above their 50-DMAs. The current reading for the sector remains at an impressive 98%.  Meanwhile, one market leader and one market laggard, Technology and Energy, also boast more than 90% of stocks above their 50-DMAs.  On the other end of the spectrum, Real Estate is the only group with less than half of its stocks below their 50-DMA.  Utilities is similarly weak with only a little more than half of its components above their respective moving averages. Rounding out the bottom three, Financials is the only other sector with less than three-quarters of its stocks above its moving averages.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our Sector Snapshot and much more.

Stocks ripped higher yesterday with the S&P 500 rising over 3% on the day.  For some stocks in the index, this surge in buying helped to finally push price above their ranges that have been in place over the past several weeks. While not every stock in the index that is experiencing this pattern is shown, in the charts from our Chart Scanner tool below, we show 20 S&P 500 stocks that saw this type of breakout from a sideways trend yesterday. These breakouts were not specific to any one group but could be found across the various sectors.  While they still have a ways to go until they reach their prior highs, these bullish breakouts also marked the highest levels of these stocks since bottoming in March.  For a few stocks, the sideways trends of the past several weeks also coincided with the 200-day and 50-day moving averages which have acted as either support or resistance. That was the case with stocks like Align (ALGN), Best Buy (BBY), CH Robinson Worldwide (CHRW) and Masco (MAS) to name a few.

Not only are some stocks hitting their highest level of the past few weeks but some are also reaching their highest levels of the past year.  From our 52-week high screen in our Chart Scanner, the charts below show a dozen S&P 500 stocks that rose to fresh 52-week highs as of yesterday.  Again these are not bound to any single group instead showing participation across sectors and industries.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive Chart Scanner tool and much more.

We’ve been monitoring Google search trends over the last couple of months, and today we noticed that searches are picking up for things like trucks and jeeps.  Below are five-year charts of search trends for “F150” — the most popular truck in the country made by Ford — as well as “jeep.”  Searches for both hit multi-year lows in the middle of the Covid lockdowns, but they’ve really picked up in recent weeks and are now at pre-Covid levels.  Commercial air travel and public transportation will likely remain less appealing options than driving in the post-Covid economy, which is at least one thing the auto industry has going for it.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Premium to access our full range of equity market research and interactive tools.