US equity futures are pointed lower once again this morning with the S&P 500 SPY ETF trading down more than 80 basis points pre-market.  This morning’s weakness exacerbates what was already a weakened position heading into this morning.  As shown in our Trend Analyzer snapshot of US index ETFs below, every one of them is already trading below its 50-day moving average.  Both small and mid-caps are in oversold territory trading more than one standard deviation below their 50-DMAs.  Of the large-cap ETFs, the Dow 30 (DIA) and Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) are the closest to oversold, while SPY is only slightly below its 50-DMA by 0.42%.

A quick look at where S&P 500 sector ETFs are trading shows the defensive posture that investors have taken recently.  Cyclical sectors like Energy, Materials, Industrials, Technology, and Consumer Discretionary are all below their 50-day moving averages, while Real Estate, Consumer Staples, and Utilities — all defensives — are the only sectors trading in overbought territory.  Utilities (XLU) has seen massive buying over the last week, moving higher by 2.27% into extreme overbought territory (>2 standard deviations above its 50-DMA).

It’s a similar situation globally.  Every one of the regional ETFs tracked in our Trend Analyzer tool are below their 50-day moving averages, and more than half are in oversold territory.  Three are at extreme levels on the downside — two emerging markets ETFs (EEM, IEMG) and the All Country Asia ex Japan ETF (AAXJ).  The Europe Hedged Equity ETF (HEDJ) is the closest to its 50-DMA at -0.54%.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke for full access to our research tool-kit.

The map below provides a color-coded breakdown of the number of S&P 500 companies domiciled in each state across the USA. Not surprisingly, the biggest states in terms of population tend to have the largest number of S&P 500 companies headquartered in them.  Leading the way, 78 companies are domiciled in California, followed by New York with 58, and Texas with 41.  Meanwhile, there are 13 states which are home to no S&P 500 companies, including Alaska and Hawaii.  In the case of those two states, the difference in time zone makes it understandable that no S&P 500 companies are headquartered there, but one would think a company with a name like Alaska Air would at least be located in Alaska, right?  Illinois, which arguably has among the shakiest finances of any state, is home to 30 S&P 500 companies and that’s the fourth most even though it is only the sixth largest state.  Among the biggest outliers, though, is Florida.  Even though it has the third largest population of any state, only 15 S&P 500 companies call it home, ranking it all the way down at number ten.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke for full access to our research.

While the chart above shows the number of S&P 500 companies located in each state, the chart below shows the average YTD performance of the S&P 500 companies by state.  Before going any further here, though, it is important to point out that these numbers can be a bit misleading since some states have a large number of companies while others just have one or two, thereby skewing the averages.  With that in mind, Maine is the first state the sun touches each day, and it is also home to IDEXX Labs (IDXX) which is up 34% YTD, ranking it first of the 50 states.  While Florida underperformed a bit in terms of the number of companies headquartered there, the average return of those companies is 22% YTD, ranking near the top in terms of states on the east coast.

Moving on to the midwest, the 30 companies headquartered in Illinois have underperformed the S&P 500 with an average gain of just 12% YTD.  Further South, the fact that Louisiana (LA) is home to just two companies and one of them is Centurylink (CTL), which has declined 32% this year, makes it the state with the worst average return in the country.  Right next door, Texas (TX) has a lot of exposure to the Energy sector among the 41 companies headquartered there and that has been a bit of a weight on its average YTD return of 13%.  Finally, the dominance of Technology in California (CA) has the average stock headquartered in that state up 17% YTD as companies like Cadence (CDNS), Advanced Micro (AMD), and Facebook (FB) are all up over 40%.

US agricultural markets have been closely focused on the very slow pace of corn planting this year. The result was a 12% surge in corn prices for July delivery, under the assumption that wet weather and low prices would incentivize a small crop planting this year.

As shown in the left chart below, USDA observers report the crop is only 49% planted so far, the slowest pace since 1993, a year that saw corn harvests fall over 30% from the year before. That’s reason to suspect supply of corn will be light come harvest time, but it’s important to note that there’s not much historical relationship between corn planting progress in the 7th week of the season and the following year’s production growth versus the prior year.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to read more on commodity markets and the global macro backdrop.

Our Chart Scanner has become an incredibly popular and useful tool for clients as it gives a user the ability to quickly scan through hundreds of charts in order to find the most attractive (or unattractive) patterns.  Included with the tool are a number of pre-defined screens that allow users to see, for example, stocks that just experienced a golden or death cross.

A Golden Cross occurs when a stock’s upwardly sloping 50-day moving average (DMA) crosses above its 200-DMA, which also has to be rising.  Conversely, a Death Cross occurs when a downwardly sloping 50-DMA crosses below the 200-DMA, which also has to be moving lower. Technicians consider Golden Cross formations to be a positive signal, while a Death Cross is considered negative.  Although it is valuable to look at Golden and Death Cross formations, as we have pointed out in the past, they are not always reliable buy or sell signals.  With that caveat, though, today we wanted to highlight two recent examples of a Golden Cross formation where each stock tended to show positive returns going forward.

Below is our first example, Helen of Troy (HELE), which saw a Golden Cross yesterday.  HELE is a producer of household goods and beauty products and also owns the wildly popular Hydro-Flask brand. While the stock has seen mixed returns in the short run following its six golden cross formations since 2007, over the following three months, HELE had positive returns five out of six times for an average gain of 11.61% (median: 9.73%).

With summer around the corner, instead of water, you may just want to fill up your Hydro-Flask with your favorite cocktail, and Constellation Brands (STZ) has everything you’ll need on that front.  The producer of various spirits, Corona beer, Mondavi wine, and many others also saw a Golden Cross yesterday.  Similar to HELE, STZ has tended to see positive returns following prior golden cross formations going all the way back to 2000.  Following five of the prior eight golden crosses for the stock since 2000, the stock saw positive returns over the following week and month, but three months later, STZ’s performance was even stronger with an average gain of 11.6% (median: 15.8%) and gains three-quarters of the time. Helen of Troy and Constellation Brands – a perfect match for summer!

For full access to our Chart Scanner tool and its daily screens, start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Premium now.

Using our Chart Scanner tool, members can quickly scan through price charts for hundreds of stocks across major US indices as well as a large array of ETFs.  Below we highlight some stocks that are at interesting points.

Major auto part retailers Autozone (AZO) and Advance Auto Parts (AAP) both reported strong earnings yesterday morning and this morning, respectively.  This has helped the stocks rally further after bouncing off of the lower end of their uptrends. Similarly, Tractor Supply (TSCO) is another specialty retailer that has seen a bounce from the bottom portion of this year’s uptrend channel.  Yesterday’s trading also brought the stock out of the past month’s downtrend. Citigroup (C), Invesco (IVZ), and Facebook (FB) are also all at the bottom of their uptrends. One more retailer — Costco (COST) — has resumed its uptrend, breaking out to new 52-week highs recently after pulling back to the 50-DMA. Darden Restaurants (DRI) and Hartford Financial (HIG) have similarly broken above long term resistance to new 52-week highs.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Premium to access our popular Chart Scanner tool now.