Sector Update for November 15th

Last week's sector update found that the eight S&P 500 sectors that I follow had turned bearish in their short-term trending. Here's how we're looking at the end of this past week, based upon the Technical Strength measure.

MATERIALS: -320
INDUSTRIAL: -200
CONSUMER DISCRETIONARY: -240
CONSUMER STAPLES: -160
ENERGY: -140
HEALTH CARE: -120
FINANCIAL: -300
TECHNOLOGY: -300

We can see that, despite volatile moves to the upside and downside this past week, the trending behavior of the sectors is pretty similar to last week. While we've seen short bursts of impressive short covering/buying, we haven't yet been able to turn that into a sustained uptrend. As of the close on Friday, only 13% of SPX stocks were above their 20-day moving averages, according to Decision Point. One reflection of the market's weakness this past week: on Thursday, 155 out of the 500 S&P stocks made fresh 52-week lows. That remains lower than the 228 lows registered in late October and much lower than the over 400 (!) SPX lows that we saw in the second week of October.
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