What a Difference a Week Can Make!
Sunday, August 31st, 2008After a detailed analysis last week of the performance of US vs Canadian stocks, we came to the conclusion that the ramp up of US stocks with positive trend values over the past month couldn’t be ignored. Using broader measures than we ordinarily provide here, we determined that 57% of US stocks were trending upward, but just 27% of Canadian stocks were doing so.
Well, a week can sometimes make quite a difference. The US number has held steady at 57% as of Friday, but the broad Canadian measure has moved up to 38% from 27%. More importantly, our S&P/TSX Composite Index-based chart is literally charging ahead, as you’ll see below.
We now have 63% of this pool of about 250 companies trending higher. It isn’t particularly surprising that the blue-chip stocks are leading the way, but the improvement over the past two weeks has been quite phenomenal.
The S&P/TSX Composite Index itself rose a respectable +2.4% last week, while the US markets stalled (Dow Industrials -0.7%, S&P 500 -0.7%, Nasdaq -2.0%).
The ENERGY and MATERIALS sectors are improving, but not as much as other groups like INDUSTRIALS and CONSUMER DISCRETIONARY. Have a look the DATA & CHARTS workbook for more.
Meanwhile, you should also check out our fairly new Videos page. It’s a juke box of investment-related clips… ranging from introductory materials through to interviews with gurus and some outright rants on specific topics. We’ll be adding new selections from time to time and removing any that become stale.