Almost every Small-cap sector is down since the highs in late December. That was 2 months ago.
The day the US Dollar Index bottomed was the exact day that Small-caps stopped going up in price.
That was also the same day that the US 10yr Yield bottomed.
I don't believe that was a coincidence.
You're welcome to.
What I see is a group of stocks struggling to make any progress. It's hard to underperform the Small-cap indexes, but somehow Financials found a way.
Here are Small-cap Financials, which are loaded up with regional bank stocks, rolling over and making new 4-month lows relative to the Small-cap 600 Index.
You know the old saying that Bull Markets are more fun than Bear Markets?
It's true.
And not because you can't make money in a bear market. You can. In fact, you usually make money much faster in bear markets. That's just how the market behaves.
But the truth is that bull markets are definitely more fun.
I can tell you from first hand experience over the years. The parties in bull markets are more fun and they are more frequent, than in bear markets.
Last night was definitely a bull market party. Josh Brown turned 46 and I turned 42.
Strazza even flew up to New York for the festivities.
Back in the late 1800s, Charlie Dow was a journalist in Springfield Massachusetts.
His job was to write about the stock market. But when he would go knocking on doors asking companies questions, they would tell him, "Our business is none of your business".
So how could poor Charlie do his job then?
Well, he concluded that there was a better way to do this.
He recognized that there were a select group of stocks that, "Made the goods", and he called those the Industrials.
And then there was the group of companies that, "Delivered those goods". At the time, they were the Railroads.
If one of these groups of stocks were going up in price, and so was the other group, then things are moving in a positive direction together. Those were good signs for the market.
It was specifically when one of those groups were...
One of the things we've been monitoring closely over the past month is the new lows list.
I see very often how people love to just subtract random numbers from each other, mostly for the sake of subtracting.
There's really no reason for it.
For example, lately I'm sure you've noticed some traders and analysts taking the new 52-week high list and then arbitrarily subtracting the number of new 52-week lows from it.