After the BREXIT panic, the markets roared back and simply never stopped. SPX bounced back over 8% from June 28th to today's close at $2175. But SPX has looked pretty flat for the past seven trading sessions. Is the bull running out of steam? The Russell 2000 Index (RUT) closed today at $1213, up $9. RUT remains about $83 below its all-time high set last year. RUT would have to rally nearly 7% from here to set a new high. So RUT and SPX are telling entirely different stories. The NASDAQ Composite Index is somewhere in between. NASDAQ closed at $5100 today, and only has to move another one percent to match its previous all-time high at $5155. But NASDAQ's chart looks more like SPX; it is trending upward in steady fashion - no plateau there.
Why is this comparison of the major market indices useful? The small caps that make up the Russell 2000 are the classic high beta stocks. When the bull market runs, small caps typically lead the action as the big institutional firms go "risk on". But they also lead the corrections as well, as everyone looks for safety in the blue chips of the S&P 500. So the fact that RUT has traded higher for the past few weeks, but much more slowly than SPX may be significant. Maybe the bullish activity is more conservative than we may think. If that is the case, then the apparent flattening of the S&P 500 index may be telling.
If we look for hard economic data to support this bullish run, we are going to come up short. Part of the reason SPX is slowing is the lack of glowing reports from the current earnings cycle. Maybe this run is based on renewed confidence that the Fed won't raise interest rates again anytime soon. Another possibility is the "best house in the bad neighborhood" theory. The global economy is slowing and, even though the U.S. economic data are mediocre at best, we are looking better than most of the developed economies. Perhaps we are seeing the effects of global cash flows into our stock market.
As long as RUT lags behind, I am inclined to be cautious about jumping on the bulls' band wagon. I am playing some bullish trades and I am hedging some of my short call spreads positioned above the market, but I am watching it closely. At best, I'm a nervous bull.
