Today is one of the busiest days of earnings season, and with these reports, we have also gotten a massive number of earnings triple plays over the past 24 hours. Since last night’s close, 22 companies have reported better than expected sales and EPS while also raising guidance. For reference, heading into today there were a total of only 35 triple plays this entire earnings season!

Charles River Associates (CRAI), a consulting firm, is up the most since last night’s close having risen more than 20%. Other stocks that have risen double-digits include Universal Display (OLED), ManTech (MANT), Ultra Clean Holdings (UCTT), and Teledoc (TDOC). Of all these triple plays, Inovalon (INOV) saw the largest gap up at the open, rising 13.94%. Despite that gap up, INOV has fallen since the open. On the other hand, only three companies, Generac (GNRC), YETI (YETI), and ACADIA Pharma (ACAD) gapped down today. While overall performance so far for this group of stocks has been strong with an average gain of over 4.7%, intraday performance has been somewhat weak. Just under half of them have sold off since the open. The worst of these is recent IPO Lyft (LYFT) which, as of this writing, has fallen almost 7% since the open, erasing all of its gap higher. Cigna (CI), Masimo (MASI) and FormFactor (FORM) have also more than erased this morning’s gap higher.

Using data from our Earnings Explorer, other stocks that have reported triple plays this earnings season have risen an average of 0.83% from open to close and have averaged a full-day gain of 4.86%.  Looking at all triple plays throughout history since our data begins in 2001, those averages are 0.26% and 5.4%, respectively.  In other words, this season’s triple plays including today have been doing better than average on an intraday basis, but have been slightly weaker in regards to the full-day stock price reaction. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive Earnings Explorer and much more.

Last week, we noted the sharp rebound in sentiment over the past few weeks.  In the wake of those large moves, the AAII survey of investor sentiment took a breather this week despite the market’s successful efforts to reach new highs.  The S&P 500’s new all-time highs have done little to garner optimism, though, as bullish sentiment declined 1.6 percentage points to just a hair under 34%. While lower than last week, it is still at the higher end of where sentiment has been over the past few months and in the middle of the past couple of years’ range.

Bearish sentiment took some of that loss from the bullish camp as it rose 0.16 percentage points. That is the smallest one week change in bearish sentiment since the last week of June when it fell 0.08 percentage points. Additionally, this was only the 20th time in the past decade that bearish sentiment changed less than 0.2 percentage points.

Neutral sentiment took the larger share of the losses from bulls as it rose to 37.59% and is now at the highest level since the beginning of the month when it reached 39.19%. Neutral sentiment is also still the predominant sentiment reading for the third week in a row, outweighing bearish, and to a lesser extent, bullish sentiment readings.  In other words, investors do not seem to have fully bought into the new highs for the S&P 500, but are at least slightly more optimistic than pessimistic.  Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.

After falling to 213K last week (revised up from 212K), initial jobless claims returned right back to where they stood the week before at 218K.  While that was a bigger increase than expected—up 5K from last week compared to expectations for claims to rise to 215K—claims have not made any significant new high or low. Instead, the data remains right in the range it has been in for the last six months.  Claims trending sideways, if not slightly lower over the past year, has not necessarily been a bad thing though as they have held at very healthy levels and continued the record streaks at or below 250K and 300K.  Those streaks have grown to 108 and 243 consecutive weeks, respectively. Overall, this week’s report was nothing too exciting and only reaffirmed the recent trend of no improvements but also no deterioration in the data.

The four-week moving average reiterates this trend as well as it fell to 214.75K from 215.25K.  This was the second straight week with a decline of 0.5K week-over-week. The moving average is also slightly lower year-over-year dropping just 1.25K.

While those are improvements, they are much smaller than earlier in the cycle. As shown in the chart below, the sideways trend in jobless claims has shown up in the fact that y/y readings in the four-week moving average have flatlined.

As with the moving average, non-seasonally adjusted jobless claims fell WoW and YoY. Now at 198.1K, NSA claims are just 0.4K below where they stood one year ago. Looking forward through the end of the year, seasonal patterns will likely lead NSA claims to grind higher week-over-week until the annual peak around the end of December/early January. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive economic indicators monitor and much more.

After trading in a rather tight range over the last few months, the Health Care sector’s chart has taken some dramatic turns in the last few weeks.  Just earlier this month, as Elizabeth Warren’s poll numbers were surging, Health Care appeared to be on the verge of breaking down as its price broke below both the 50 and 200-day moving average as well as the summer lows.  Just as the sector looked to be on its deathbed, though, it has seen a dramatic recovery to the point where it is now testing its 2019 highs! It should come as no surprise that the recent rally has coincided with what has recently been a decline in Warren’s poll numbers, but positive earnings results from high profile names in the sector have also helped.

The chart below shows the daily overbought/oversold readings for the S&P 500 Health Care sector over the last year.  The chart measures where the sector is trading relative to its 50-day moving average (measured in standard deviations).  When the line is in the red zones, it indicates that the sector is overbought while readings in the green zone indicate that the sector is oversold.

Recent readings for the sector reflect the major shift that the sector has seen in the last four weeks.  As recently as October 2nd, the Health Care sector was in extreme oversold territory, trading more than two standard deviations below its 50-day moving average.  In the span of fewer than four weeks, the sector has gone from extreme oversold to extreme overbought, which is the type of reversal you don’t see very often.  In fact, going back to 1980, it has only happened in eight prior periods with the most recent occurring all the way back in July 2016 just after the original Brexit vote.

When a sector reaches extreme overbought levels, it usually indicates that it is due for a pause to work off the overbought condition.  In order to work off the overbought condition, the sector could either experience a pullback in price or a period of sideways trading so that the sector’s moving averages can catch up to the current price.  These pauses and pullbacks don’t always start exactly when the sector reaches overbought levels, though.  In fact, back in July 2016 when the sector last saw a similar reversal, Health Care kept rallying after its sharp positive reversal gaining 1.2% over the following week and 3.1% over the next month. Start a two-week free trial to Bespoke Institutional to access our interactive tools, including the Trend Analyzer and Earnings Explorer.