Consumer Feistiness:
The utilities reared their ugly head once again as the XLU was the best performing sector Monday as well as a couple of sessions last week, as investors run toward safety. Do market participants need to adjust their stock holdings, as technology has been trampled in recent days? Or do they try to remain in their comfort zone? Keep in mind the quote that “our comfort zone is where dreams go to die”. Could the same be said about their portfolios, that they may come to wither away? I still sit in the camp that you have to stick with the partner you came to the big dance with (technology), but some other groups helped the overall benchmarks to where they reside today too. Consumer discretionary, via the XLY, is still easily the second best acting major S&P sector on a YTD basis, up nearly 17%. Below is the ratio chart comparing the XLY to the XLK, and to be frank one could have most likely compared any of the other 9 major S&P sectors, and they would have looked favorable to technology.