When it comes to S&P 500 ETF’s, they may be equal (who stocks they own), yet they can be much different when it comes to performance. Below compares the Equal Weight S&P 500 ETF (RSP) to the S&P 500 (which is Cap Weighted), since the 2009 lows. Which ETF would you rather own, RSP or SPY?
The market has gone absolutely nowhere for 15 weeks now.
That is not a typo, nor am I bearing overly negative. Since the end of February, when President Trump last tweeted that he had big plans for the economy, the S&P 500 is up a total of just 1.6% or roughly 39 points.
And THIS is the raging bull market that everyone is so crazy about? A market in which it took almost FOUR months for stocks to eek out a 1.6% gain?
Meanwhile against this backdrop of unhinged bullishness, the credit markets are flashing MAJOR warning signals.
US equity futures were marginally in the red, while Asian markets rose and European stocks dropped. WTI oil rose 0.6% to $42.79 as some suggest the time to go long has arrived; oil tumbled 2.3% in the previous session. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1 percent.
Here are the main market developments while you were sleeping.
Doubleline Capital founder Jeff Gundlach warned that the flattening yield curve could become a concern for US economic growth when two and three-year notes yield about the same, and the price per barrel of WTI crude oil plunges into the $30s, he said during a phone call with a Reuters reporter.
The last time the spread between two- and three-year yields held below 10 basis points was around the time former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced the beginning of Operation Twist and then QE3 in late 2012.
In his morning note, Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid discusses the latest bear market in oil, and highlights some interesting details for oil price fans: oil is now back to levels last seen on September 16th last year and even though we’ve rallied hard since February 2016, Oil has only been lower than this for 6% (188 days) of the time since the start of 2005. That is mostly made up of 44 days in 2008/09 and 112 days in late 2015/ early 2016. So these are pretty stressed levels relative to the past decade or so.