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We don’t think the current stock market upleg is over.

The S&P 500, showing little concern for valuations or the political climate, had its best month of performance since February.

Growth stocks more than made up ground lost to Value in September. Dividing stocks by market cap, Growth segments are leading Value by spreads of 10-15% YTD.

This is the first time this year we’ve spent two consecutive months above the long-term median Small Cap premium of 3%.

The Up/Down Ratio sports a lofty reading of 2.08—the best “one-month” measurement since January of 2015. We’ve seen this movie before—strong initial readings have fallen apart in each of the last four quarters.

Info Tech, Consumer Discretionary, and Health Care are the top-three rated sectors; Energy, Utilities, and Telecom comprise the bottom of the ranks.

If the new tax plan gets passed, Corporate bond issuance will likely decrease while demand remains strong.

The range-bound interest rate action provides a friendly environment to earn the carry, through moderate duration and high grade credit exposure.

Our data shows the traditional Phillips Curve relationship between the unemployment rate and wage inflation still holds.

Homebuilding Stocks Are On A Stellar Run—Can The Streak Continue?

While this year’s rally has been a broad, “equal opportunity” affair, some of the weakest relative action we’ve observed has—oddly enough—been among equal-weighted stock market indexes. Equal-weighted indexes for Large, Mid, and Small Caps are all trailing their cap-weighted counterparts year-to-date, and the gap for the S&P 500 is now almost 400 basis points after an especially bad October.

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

With the Major Trend Index positive and the market about to enter the seasonally most bullish part of the calendar, we’ll offer both a trendy sector and a contrarian one for allocators looking to cap off an already good year. Specifically, we’d recommend heavy exposure to both the Information Technology and Financial sectors, which rate #3 and #1 in the October Group Selection (GS) framework.

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

From a purely technical perspective, the bull market has hardly been lacking for feathers in its cap. Yet it earned another one on Tuesday when the DJIA Smart Money Flow Index (SMFI) broke out to a new bull market high (Chart 1), erasing a “non-confirmation” that had stood since March 1st. This index thereby joins the broad list of market bellwethers—chronicled in the last Green Book—that have participated in the parade of new highs.

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

During a stock market rally we find difficult to comprehend, it somehow seems appropriate to publish a chart we’re almost at a loss to explain. The first chart shows the 90-year history of the trailing one-year (252-day) correlation of daily returns across market sectors. Correlations have been in a free-fall of late, and now appear to have a good shot at undercutting the all-time low established midway through the 2000-2002 bear market.

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

Despite cyclicality, over the longer term, investing in lower valuation countries ekes out better performance in an EM portfolio, and Dividend Yield showed the most consistency in terms of value factor effectiveness.

The Chicago Cubs’ break of the 75-year Billy Goat Curse last year might have warned us of the dangers inherent in historical pattern analysis.