Leaders-Laggards

While the current environment has been great if you’re overweight tech stocks, it’s been a very bad sign for overall market health. The market is pricing in a nearly best case scenario for junk bonds and the risk/reward tradeoff keeps looking worse. While a straight line rally in the dollar is unlikely to continue, it does seem likely that strength will remain with the greenback for a while.

Over the long-term, this could be a sign that the tech sector has tried to grow too far, too fast and now needs to unwind a bit. The housing market is effectively frozen right now, so we’re not getting adequate price discovery and China is still in the process of imploding. Utilities continue to get hit from two sides. The Fed’s insinuation that the street should expect a slower pace of rate cuts in 2024 wasn’t entirely surprising and it did place a drag on financials.

Tech sector continues to dominate, but market expectations reset by Powell could be bad for tech. Communication services sector benefits from gains in Facebook & Alphabet, but market has become narrow. Emerging markets debt levels off, but rate cutting cycles and preference for U.S. assets could provide fuel for outperformance.