By: John Kosar of Street Authority
The major U.S. indices were mixed last week, closing on Friday just slightly on either side of unchanged. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 and small-cap Russell 2000 were the strongest performers. As long as the May trend of relative outperformance by these two market-leading indices continues, so should the current broad market advance.
The two strongest market sectors last week were consumer discretionary and utilities. My own asset-flow based metric shows that the biggest increase in sector bet-related assets over the past one-week and one-month periods was in utilities, which supports more upcoming strength in this sector.
A strengthening utilities sector is often driven by declining long-term U.S. interest rates, which we saw last week as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note declined by 9 basis points to 2.53%. This encourages yield-seeking investors to accept more credit risk (via utility stocks) in exchange for potentially higher returns. Therefore, as long as long-term interest rates continue to decline, it should drive more investor assets into utilities and buoy Treasury prices, which move inversely to yields.
Small Caps, Tech Should Continue Leading the Way Continue reading "Why The Bull Market May Not Be Finished Yet"
