On the eve of Chart Summit 2023, let's take a look at how some of the most important areas of the market are holding up during what is seasonally the most bearish time of the year.

Technology represents close to 30% of the S&P500 and almost half the entire Nasdaq100. And here it is going out at its lowest weekly close since May:

The stock market is messy, not trending higher, and frustrating many investors who haven't studied their market history.

This type of market environment, this time of the year, is EXACTLY what we should expect as investors.

If the market was NOT acting this way, then that would be weird.

Sometimes the market ignores seasonal trends. And that tends to be an important signal.

But, to be clear, this is definitely NOT one of those times.

The market is doing exactly what it should be doing.

See: Weakest Time of the Year

Over half the stocks on the NYSE are below their 200 day moving average. Same with the S&P500.

Here's what the index itself looks like near the lower end of this multi-month range:

The US Stock Market is mostly one big fat mess, as is perfectly normal for this time of the year.

So no surprise there.

You can catch up on our reasoning in this short post.

But the bottom line is that we're now well into month #3 of this correction, since the new 52-week highs list peaked back in July.

The fact that markets are a mess is not a big deal. The bigger question is more about how long it will take to resolve, and which stocks are holding up the best during this seasonally weak period.

We discussed some really interesting setups during our LIVE Conference Call this week.

But today I want to focus on a space that is acting way better than the rest of its peers: Cyber Security.

While Tech stocks have generally been struggling since mid-summer, take a look at Palo Alto hanging in there just fine:

Is this the world's most important trend that no one is talking about?

How many people do you know would tell you that stocks are already in their 4th year of a downtrend relative to commodities?

In other words, how many people do you know that would argue we are now in year 4 of a Commodities Supercycle?

Here's what this looks like:

The stock market correction continues....

What else would you expect during this seasonally weak period for stocks?

Historically, stocks do very well after mid-term elections. And that's exactly what happened.

Then in Q3 the struggle tends begin for a few months.

And that's precisely what we've seen this year. A perfectly normal market:

We just saw a $50 Billion Tech IPO successfully issued into public markets.

Remember those?

But before we get into growth stocks, let's just put the overall market into perspective.

It was nice to get away from the screens for a few days, while we were out at Future Proof in California. But not much has changed now that I'm back home.

Here's a shot of us during my panel discussion at the Conference:

Stocks are messy these days.

The major indexes peaked in July and the new 52-week highs list topped out almost 2 months ago.

This is all perfectly normal market behavior for this time of the year. In fact, if markets were behaving any differently, then THAT would actually be unusual.

Just like over the past 3 quarters. If stocks didn't do as well as they did, again, that would have been weird.

The market continues to behave according to historical trends, obnoxiously so.

And to be clear, it's when the market ignores seasonal tendencies that we want to pay more attention, because THAT is the signal.

In the meantime, we're just chugging along in one of the more normal years for the market that we've ever seen.

That was just the 2nd highest weekly close in the entire history of the Technology Index. It was also the 2nd highest monthly close ever.

So the question becomes: Is this just a retest of resistance and there's still a ton of overhead supply for demand to absorb?

Or is a breakout coming soon?

Oil prices just went out at their highest monthly close since last October. That was almost a year ago.

The trend for Crude Oil has turned up.

Here's all that former resistance from 2018 turning into support more recently:

With stocks selling off this quarter, the bears are back.

Could you imagine still telling yourself that the rally we got in equities over the past year was a bear market?

What kind of serial killer thinks like that?

A 3-5% correction in some of the major Indexes can cause people to lose their minds.

Heck, you may be wondering yourself if this is the beginning of a huge move lower for stock prices. I certainly am.

Remember, every big move starts with a small one. But not every small move turns into a big one.

That's where Credit Spreads come in. If there is real stress in the market, you're going to see it in credit.

But as stock prices corrected this month, Credit Spreads only got more narrow.

Here's an easy way to view that, comparing the prices of High Yield Bonds vs US Treasury Bonds:

The most important groups of stocks are stuck below overhead supply.

That's not usually a characteristic of strong uptrends where investors are consistently rewarded for owning stocks. That was the first half of this year.

Today, it's almost the exact opposite.

In this type of environment, investors are rewarded for selling volatility and collecting income. Investors also tend to be rewarded for avoiding these types of sectors and looking for opportunities elsewhere, in less correlated areas.

Here are 4 of the most important groups of stocks all stuck below their prior cycle's peaks:

Is now the time to get long equities?

If you kept up with the headlines and what the sell side analysts have to say, you'd think it would be.

Fortunately we try to stay ahead of the curve around here.

Yesterday we discussed the recent sentiment shift among permabears, wall street analysts, hedge funds and financial media.

You can read that again here.

To add to that sentiment shift, here is the our internal sentiment composite which includes data from Individual Investors, Advisories, Active Investment Managers, Volatility and the Options Market.

As you can see last year saw some of the most pessimistic levels in history, giving us one of the greatest buying opportunities we've ever seen.

Today, Sentiment is at the opposite extreme: