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One of the signature traits of the U.S. small cap market is the prevalence of money-losing companies. Our recent tally indicates that even prior to COVID-19, 38% of small caps were reporting trailing year losses despite the widespread economic strength of 2019.

As of May 2020, domestic equity mutual funds and bond mutual funds have seen record outflow, while money market mutual funds have received record net inflow. Domestic equity and bond ETFs are also experiencing record net inflow YTD.

The S&P 500 gained another 2% during June and has bounced an incredible 39% off of its March low.

The market’s love affair with anything “Growth” is translating into the most expensive market-capitalizations for the growth segments that we’ve recorded since the Tech Bubble.

Three consecutive months of outperformance for Small Caps lifted our Ratio of Ratio from its contemporary low set in March. Trailing P/E ratios for both Large and Small-Cap segments are bound to feel significant upward pressure in the coming months as better earnings results roll off the back-end.

Our final Q1 Up/Down ratio reads 0.71. This miserable “three-month” figure is in line with the darkest three quarters of the Great Recession—the worst scores in our 27-year history.

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This week's MTI...

Join us for a Zoom Call with Jim Paulsen where he will share his thoughts and observations on today's market and what he sees looking ahead.

During the first two months of the rally (and +30%) off the March lows, we noted that the usual cyclical leaders of a new bull market were underperforming on a relative basis, and there had been nothing even close to the “breadth thrust” that often accompanies an initial bull market up-leg.

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Turn on financial television at any random time, and you’re likely to soon hear the argument that still-high U.S. stock market valuations are “justified” by extremely-low interest rates. We’ve countered that these low U.S. rates are simply a reflection of the secular slowdown in economic and earnings growth.

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News that the Bureau of Labor Statistics may have undercounted the May unemployment rate by six percentage points should remind investors of the danger of taking government economic reports too seriously. Regardless of the figure, though, unemployment is no doubt near its peak for the downturn.

Read this week's Major Trend. 

Imagine our surprise when the bullish stock market narrative is suddenly all about money. Cynically, though, that might be because money supply and the unemployment rate are the only economic data series staging upside breakouts, and the latter doesn’t lend itself to a good narrative.

Long-term sentiment indicators have carved out a four-month pattern similar to what we’ve observed in Large Cap valuation measures. That’s no surprise; valuation is a sentiment measure.

Last December, we marveled at the disconnect between the (surging) S&P 500 and the (sagging) Boom/Bust Indicator. Just six months later, we can only scratch our heads at what the hell we were complaining about.

Our VLT Momentum algorithm was driven into oversold territory for at least a few months in all prior postwar bears. It didn’t happen yet this spring, which implies that the “grieving process” was neither deep enough nor long-lasting enough to set the stage for anything like a repeat of last decade’s bull. Most of our valuation work says exactly the same thing.