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Weekly Performance Recap (04-03-2020)

April 4, 2020

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Every weekend we publish simple performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with brief commentary on each.

As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.

This week we want to highlight our US Equity Index and Sector tables, as they are both showing continued evidence to support some of the trends we've discussed recently.

Click on table to enlarge view.

Last week, we wrote a post about the importance of the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) due to its long-term outperformance vs the rest of the US Equity Market. As seen in the table above this relative strength has continued over the trailing weeks and months as QQQ has outperformed the other US Indexes over every timeframe. We see no evidence of this trend reversing any time soon.

Another theme we've hit on a lot the past few years is the relative weakness as you move down the market-cap spectrum. This continued trend is illustrated by the massive underperformance from Mid (MDY), Small (IWM) and Micro-Caps (IWC) relative to the Large-Cap Indexes across all timeframes.

We also wrote a post about how the recent bear market rally in stocks has been led by defensive sectors. It does not appear like this trend is slowing down as Healthcare (XLV) and Staples (XLP) are not only the top performers over the trailing month and quarter, but were also this week's best performers outside of Energy (XLE).

Staples are actually the number one performer on our Sector list over the trailing month and quarter. JC just wrote a post titled About That Strength In Staples in which he explains why this is not a positive development for stocks as an asset class.

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