We’re back again with a quick wrap-up of the major trends that drove the market in the final month of the 2010 Q1. It was the strongest month since November not to mention we saw a few reversals take place after the January and February ETF Trends took hold. (You can click on the images to enlarge)
Let’s first take a look at the big movers from countries to sectors to commodities:
- Technology regained its dominance with the Qs (QQQQ) leading all four major indices (SPY, DIA & IWM)
- Financials and Consumer Discretionary led in the US Sectors
- Retail (XRT) and Real Estate (IYR) were most notable outperformers
- Defensive sectors like Utilities (XLU) and Healthcare (XLV) underperformed
- Asian markets started to show strength for first time in 2010
- Gold (GLD) and Natural Gas (UNG) declined while Oil (USO) and Silver (SLV) lost ground
ETF HEATMAP (March Performance) – Click to expand
New trends emerging: based on the YTD performance (2nd map below) and more recent trends here’s what we could see in April
- As you can see, for the year the indices look identical to March (the bulls finally arrived 3 months into the year)
- With China (FXI) still down for the year and just now starting to run we could see a strong bullish trend emerge
- Energy (XLE) is a 2010 underperformer, but I’d expect this divergence to converge over the next several weeks
- Global energy (TAN, FAN, KWT) would also benefit substantially from a broad based energy rally
- Goldminers may be the value pick for April based on the group being one of the weakest and underperforming gold significantly
- Commodities and Commodity based countries have
ETF HEATMAP (YTD)
US Sector Percent Chart
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