Saturday, March 22, 2008

WTF Among the Consumer Discretionary Stocks?



My last two posts tracked money flows for the Industrials stocks and for the Materials shares within the S&P 500 universe. This post takes a look at five highly weighted Consumer Discretionary stocks and plots their cumulative money flow (top chart) and five-day average flows (bottom chart) against the Consumer Discretionary ETF, XLY.

Note that, like the Industrials and Materials sectors, the Consumer Discretionary stocks have thus far held above their January lows. Observe also that cumulative money flows have held up quite well during the period of recent market (and sector) weakness, as we remain well off the money flow lows from late 2007.

Five-day flows have turned negative for the sector, but are nowhere near as intense in selling pressure as those from late 2007. While we have yet to see sustained buying interest among these shares, there does appear to be a drying up of selling pressure thus far.
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