What's Down in a Bull Market?

This useful graphic from FinViz illustrates the variability of performance among U.S. stock market sectors thus far this year.  If you owned stocks in the basic materials, healthcare, or utilities sectors, you're sporting gains in the vicinity of 9% this year.  If you owned technology and consumer goods shares, your gains are a bit less than half that.  If you owned stocks in the industrial sector, you're down on the order of 3.5%.

Indeed, here are sector and index ETFs that, as of Wednesday's close, are down for 2014:

KRE - regional banking stocks

XRT - retail stocks

XLY - consumer discretionary stocks

XLI - industrial stocks

IWM - Russell 2000 stocks

IJR - Standard and Poor's 600 small cap stocks

IWC - Russell microcap stocks

XHB - housing stocks

VGK - European stocks

EFA - Europe, Asia, and Far East stocks

DBC - commodities

EWJ - Japan stocks

That's a pretty good chunk of the equity world.  The tide of central bank liquidity has lifted many boats this year, but not all of them.

Further Reading:   A Bit of Perspective
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