Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics
The S&P 500 large caps closed 2015 essentially flat on a total return basis, while the NASDAQ 100 showed a little better performance at +8.3% and the Russell 2000 small caps fell -5.9%. Overall, stocks disappointed even in the face of modest expectations, especially the small caps as market leadership was mostly limited to a handful of large and mega-cap darlings. Notably, the full year chart for the S&P 500 looks very much like 2011. It got off to a good start, drifted sideways for a few months, threw everyone into a tizzy with a scary summer correction, found double-bottom support leading to a strong October rally, and then fell into a sideways consolidation for the last two months of the year. It’s like deja vu. In both years, a sideways channel set the trading range most of the time, and without a strong catalyst, there simply wasn’t enough fuel to ignite a major breakout for either the bulls or the bears.
In contrast to 2015 ending as it did with a whimper, the first trading day of 2016 was downright scary (the worst opening day for the Dow Industrials in eight years) — as if to give fair warning of a more volatile year ahead. But higher volatility wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, as investors and corporations may be more inclined to allocate capital with an eye toward risk exposures, i.e., a flight to quality, including value, GARP (growth at a reasonable price), and dividend-paying stocks. We just might end up looking back on 2015 as a cautious year of transition out of the ZIRP era.
In this weekly update, I give my view of the current market environment, offer a technical analysis of the S&P 500 chart, review our weekly fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten U.S. business sectors, and then offer up some actionable trading ideas, including a sector rotation strategy using ETFs and an enhanced version using top-ranked stocks from the top-ranked sectors.
Market overview:
Yes, U.S. stocks mostly disappointed investors last year, although few market commentators at the beginning of the year were expecting much in the way of returns for the stock market to begin with — perhaps at best seeing prices move up in proportion to aggregate earnings growth. But aggregate earnings growth didn’t materialize, thanks mainly to…
