Given the recent market weakness, it’s no surprise that Sector Detector’s long/short portfolios have outperformed. This week, Sabrient’s SectorCast-ETF model remains defensive. Of course, the underlying quantitative model isn’t aware that we are entering a time of year that is traditionally bullish. It simply reads the data and tells us which sectors appear to be relatively overvalued.

The market ended last week in a good mood, but is still struggling to gain enough traction for a sustained breakout beyond 1100 on the S&P500. The question in everyone’s mind:  Is it simply consolidating in preparation for a big Santa Claus rally? There are certainly plenty of market observers on both sides of the fence.

Last month, I posted that net insider trading transactions had turned positive for the first time since May. Updating this for the week ending November 27, it appears that optimistic insiders again outnumber pessimistic ones.

As the stock market continues to trade near its highs, Sabrient’s SectorCast-ETF model remains defensive, given its GARP (growth at reasonable price) focus. The top and bottom ranked sectors remain the same this week, but there was noticeable movement in the middle. In particular, Information Technology is dropping while Telecommunications rises.

Black Friday was black in more ways than one, with a number of negative events. Still the market held up reasonably well.  Perhaps there’s nowhere else to get an acceptable return on one’s cash. At least the stock market has shown some strength, and valuations with a few exceptions are reasonable from a historic perspective.

Sabrient’s SectorCast ETF rankings solidified its defensive bent this week. Healthcare continues to lead, but Consumer Staples moved ahead of InfoTech into the second spot. On the bottom, Materials remains in the basement as the fundamentally most overvalued sector, but Industrials dropped quite a bit in the wake of its recent price momentum, which added to its already overvalued levels.

I rather expected the market to be somewhat slow this week, waiting to see what would happen on Black Friday (traditionally initiating the period when retailers go from posting a loss to turning a profit). Instead, the market rose rapidly this morning, up nearly 2% in the first couple of hours. It later tailed off a bit but still closed as a very good day.

We are seeing only slight movement to Sabrient’s Sector Detector ETF rankings, as Healthcare, InfoTech, and Consumer Staples continue to lead, while Materials sinks further into the cellar and remains the fundamentally most overvalued sector. 

Latest rankings: This week, SectorCast-ETF indicates that Healthcare (XLV) remains solidly in front on a forward-looking basis, with the highest score of 93.

Since the unemployment release of 10.2% on November 6, virtually all economic releases have been modestly positive and the late reporting companies have had strong results (including revenues) and strong guidance.  So why has the market been going up and down on a daily basis over the past week?

Healthcare, InfoTech, and Consumer Staples continue to lead in the Sector Detector ETF rankings, based on Sabrient’s fundamentals-based SectorCast model. Actually, they increased their scores this week relative to the other sectors as the bottom-up speculative rally led to further overvaluation in the fundamentally weaker sectors.