KRE Breakout Holds and Bodes well for Small-caps (Free)

It was another week and another new high for SPY and the old economy. Outside of tech and high-growth, strength in the S&P 500 is broad as the S&P 500 Equal-weight ETF also hit a new high. ETFs related to industrials, finance, materials, consumer staples, transports, healthcare, energy, housing, steel, copper, and uranium hit

The broad market environment (market regime) remains bullish. The Composite Breadth Model is bullish and the key inputs (breadth indicators) support this bull market. Even though QQQ dipped the last two weeks and IWM stalled since mid February (blue shading), SPY hit a new high recently and all three remain well above their rising 200-day SMAs (red lines).

A benchmark high/low is a price peak/trough that we can use to compare performance. ETFs that break above benchmark highs, such as the mid March highs, show relative strength. ETFs that fail to exceed these highs show relative weakness. ETFs that break below benchmark lows, such as the late April lows, show relative weakness. ETFs that hold these lows show relative strength.

Old economy ETFs continue to lead. ETFs related to industrials, materials, metals, housing and finance hit new highs. These ETFs were already in uptrends and they were simply extending on their breakouts, which occurred in March or April. Even though they are leading and in strong uptrends, many are getting quite extended and ripe for a rest. This means they are in the trend-monitoring phase.

The stock market has been churning the last few weeks with indecisive price action producing a fair number of whipsaws and head fakes. The old school ETFs associated with industrials, materials, REITs, housing, steel, metals and agriculture continue to lead. The high-beta high-flyers of 2020 continue to lag and many did not even make it back above

The bulk of the evidence remains bullish for stocks, but we are seeing a short-term non-confirmation from QQQ and continued relative weakness in IWM. SPY remains the leader of the group with a new high this week. However, the current leg up is also getting quite extended because we have not seen a decent correction in six months. Even though the risk appetite returned to QQQ and

There are dozens of ETFs in the trend-monitoring phase because their setups evolved in February-March, they broke out at least a month ago and moved higher the last two months (or more). There is no real analysis to be done with these ETFs because they are in their post-breakout moves (trend-monitoring phase). Today’s report will show charts for these ETFs first.

It has been a wild ride for the Russell 2000 Growth ETF (IWO) and Nasdaq 100 Next Gen ETF (QQQJ) over the last two weeks as they went from emerging leaders to overreaction laggards and back to leading. The lagging part occurred last Tuesday when stocks fell sharply during the day. This whipsaw action is looking more like short-term noise because these two are leading again with strong recoveries.