Tuesday, September 2, 2008

August Sector Recap

August was a month in which the S&P 500 largely drifted sideways, but there was a good deal going on in the various sectors that make up the index. The graphic below shows sector performance for the nine sector SPDRs for the first eight months of 2008 (bottom) and for the month August (top).

On the plus side, the turnaround in the consumer discretionary sector (XLY) is clearly responsible for much of the recent positive momentum in the SPX. Also worth noting is that four other sectors outperformed the index in August: consumer staples (XLP), health care (XLV), industrials (XLI), and technology (XLK).

As has often been the case during the past few months, when the SPX has been moving up, energy (XLE) and materials (XLB) have been moving in the opposite direction. In August, the financial sector (XLF) was also pulling the index in the wrong direction.

Watch the consumer for more clues about sector leadership and overall market strength in the month of September.



[source: StockCharts]

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6 comments:

  1. Bill LubySeptember 2, 2008 at 10:10 AM

    In a related vein, I see that Mark Hulbert is out today with some predictions on which sectors will lead the next bull market.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 2, 2008 at 12:39 PM

    May want to double check the August stats. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bill LubySeptember 2, 2008 at 12:48 PM

    Thanks for the heads up, anon. I'm not sure what I had in there. I have now edited the graphic to the correct August data.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousSeptember 2, 2008 at 12:57 PM

    Third time will undoubtedly be the charm. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 2, 2008 at 1:13 PM

    XLY/6.9%/-6.3%
    XLP/2.7%/-1.3%
    XLE/0.3%/-5.4%
    XLF/-1.0%/-24.7%
    XLV/2.1%/-6.8%
    XLI/2.7%/-9.3%
    XLB/-1.6%/-3.9%
    XLK/1.8%/-14.4%

    ??

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  6. Bill LubySeptember 2, 2008 at 1:44 PM

    Clearly the sector SPDR web site was letting me down -- so I switched to StockCharts.com

    Thanks for the heads up. The numbers passed the stink test, but I should have checked them out in detail from the beginning. So much for my trust in the sector SPDR web site data.

    Cheers,

    -Bill

    ReplyDelete