It’s said that the most bullish thing stocks can do is go up. If something goes up enough, it starts to make new highs. Indexes like the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100, fueled by gains in a handful of mega-cap stocks, have been making new highs but beneath the surface, participation has been relatively narrow. Breaking the S&P 1500 into its component indexes, we see that while still not getting a plethora of new highs (especially at the mid-cap and small-cap level), we have seen some improvement over the past month. Encouraging, but not yet exciting. For that, we want to see new highs eclipse their early June levels (which for the S&P 1500 overall would be in the 200-250 range).
