On the last day of the quarter below is a list of the best and worst performing S&P 500 stocks quarter to date. The S&P is down 12.9% for the quarter with about two hours left in the trading day.
Despite the Dow being up 150 pts as I write, one segment of the market that’s not on board with the rally are consumer momentum stocks, which are down almost across the board–many significantly so:
NFLX -8.7%
AMZN -2.33%
LULU -3.2%
CMG -2.2%
PCLN -4.5%
GMCR -5.5%
FOSL -10%
DECK -4.3%
PNRA -0.5%
Despite a 60% drop from it’s $300 high, NFLX is still trading at 30x earnings. How low can it go?
There was an article in the Journal today about hedge fund competitors of John Paulson preparing to capitalize on Paulson’s poor performance by gaming his possible liquidations. Below are the top 10 holdings of Paulson’s funds as of the end of June. Some have suggested that this could be the cause of the recent weakness in gold–unlikely but an interesting hypothesis.
The S&P 500 is down 5.5% YTD including today’s rally. Perhaps not too surprisingly “defensive” sectors are faring the best in the negative environment. Utilities are the strongest performers YTD followed by Consumer Staples and Healthcare. Financials have been the worst performers while Energy, which was the best performing sector by a wide margin earlier in the year has been hit hard by recession fears.
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Last month I pointed out how Gold has a tendency to spike and then move sideways back toward the 200 day moving average. After moving sideways for a bit gold has taken a big tumble, but in the context of the run it had before that point, there hasn’t been too much damage to the chart from a technical standpoint. A big test for gold is approaching though as the trend line that has held for almost 3 year is challenged.
Last week, the Fed released its flow of funds report, which provides the most comprehensive view of asset and debt holdings within the US economy. One of the more important tables included is the one which details the balance sheet of the aggregate US consumer, presented below.
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The Fed presents this data in nominal terms though. Adjusted for inflation using CPI, household net worth tells a slightly different story. By this measure, American consumers are no wealthier than than they were in 1999.
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Following yesterday’s rout, the S&P 500 has turned negative on a year over year basis. It’s been quite a ride since last time this year.
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