Here are a couple of excerpts from Bespoke Investment Group, check out their website for more details, tables and charts.
Financials Back to Oversold
After briefly moving into overbought territory earlier in the month, the S&P 500 Financial sector has moved to the bottom of its trading range once again. The short-term uptrend that formed off the March lows has also been broken, so the sector is now trending sideways until it takes out its recent highs or lows. Breadth has also gotten weak again. On May 1st, 85% of Financial stocks in the S&P 500 were trading above their 50-day moving averages. Currently, just a third of the stocks are above their 50-days. Hopefully the sector begins to stabilize at current levels and doesn’t get back to the extreme oversold levels constantly seen over the past 9 months.
NYSE Short Interest Back Near Record Highs
Last night after the close, short interest figures for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) were released and showed that short sales as of May 15th rose 2.34% since the end of April. Even though the S&P 500 closed at its highest level since January, short bets remain near all-time highs. This is in contrast to October when short interest was declining leading up to the market’s peak, and indicates that many investors are skeptical of the current rally.
The table below lists the twenty non-Nasdaq stocks in the S&P 500 (Nasdaq short interest figures will be released on May 27th.) with the highest short interest as a percentage of float. Like last month, Consumer Discretionary and Financial stocks are well represented on the list of stocks most heavily shorted…
