An Update On Various Markets

Just in case you've been living under a rock for the past six weeks you probably know that oil has plunged.  The winner of that scenario has been consumers.  It costs a lot less to fill up a car these days then it did even three months ago.  But there are downsides to that, particularly in those parts of the  world where exporting petroleum products is a sizable portion of the budget.  Markets initially focused on the good news aspect from the oil patch, but in the past week or so has increasingly looked to the economic downside.  As such markets have been in a classic "risk off" mode while trying to figure out what's been going on.  I'll have more thoughts about this on Friday but today I wanted to show you the monthly returns of various asset classes as represented by ETFs we follow.  Charts are from Stockcharts.com.

First chart shows some of the major market indices we follow.  Not so bad, showing basically a run of the mill sell off that could easily be attributed to a market that was overbought.  Take a look at emerging markets {far right of the graph}.  These have just been taken out and shot.  Other measure of fear to note is what's happened to the junk bond market.  

Another view of foreign markets.  Treasuries have done well.  I find it interesting that gold has barely budged during all of this.

US S&P 500 market sectors.  Take away energy and the overall market here has held up better than most.

Markets, particularly overseas indices, are over sold enough now that probability would suggest a bounce of some sort.  There are also the end of year seasonal aspects to consider.  That being said, stocks have tried to rally at the open for the past several days and have been sold down during the day so we'll have to see.

*We are long various ETFs depicted above in client and or personal accounts.  Positions can vary in accounts depending on account strategy and the unique risk/reward characteristics of our clients.