By Scott Martindale
President, Sabrient Systems LLC

In late May, the major US stock indexes finally eclipsed those pesky psychological levels and hit new highs, and this week they have managed to maintain the breakout even in the face of James Comey’s Congressional testimony and the British election, not to mention more saber-rattling from North Korea. The S&P 500 has held above 2,400, and the Dow has maintained the 21,000 level. The ultra-strong and Tech-heavy Nasdaq regained 6,300 and the Russell 2000 small caps moved back above 1,400 after both briefly pulling back below to test support early in the week. They both showed notable strength on Thursday after the James Comey testimony. Such backing-and-filling and technical consolidation was inevitable given that the proverbial “rubber band” was stretched so tight, with price rising well above the moving averages.

With the strength in Nasdaq, it should come as no surprise that the Technology sector has been by far the top performing sector, up about +22% year to date, while Energy has struggled, falling about -15% YTD. Notably, on Wednesday, oil prices fell more than 4% due to an unexpected rise in U.S. crude inventories.

In this periodic update, I give my view of the current market environment, offer a technical analysis of the S&P 500 chart, review Sabrient’s weekly fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten U.S. business sectors, and then offer up some actionable ETF trading ideas. In summary, our sector rankings still look bullish, while the sector rotation model maintains its bullish bias. Volatility remains historically low, economic conditions continue to improve, and overall, the climate seems quite favorable for risk assets like equities – particularly dividend payers, small caps, and GARP stocks (i.e., growth companies among all caps selling at attractive forward PEG ratios). Read on....