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A new position in Drug Retail was added to the Select Industries Portfolio in April. The latest update to the Group Selection (GS) Score showed improvement in several factor categories which pushed the overall score back to Attractive.

Reinsurance has rated Attractive for a little over one year, but the latest round of GS Scores sent this group’s score skyrocketing, and it now ranks fourth highest among all 115 industry groups. Select Industries Portfolio overall insurance industry group exposure now 8.1%.

While Large/Mid Cap Biotechnology companies are boasting rising profitability, better cash flows, and stronger drug pipelines, the Small/Micro Cap Biotech firms, in general, have little tangible to show and valuations may be above the comfort zone.

Factor performance reversed course again in April, with the spike in oil driving most of the volatility.

Health Care, Info Tech, and Consumer Discretionary are the top three rated broad sectors.

The safest highs to sell in the stock market are “lonely” new highs. Fortunately, the April 24th bull market high in the S&P 500 was anything but, as that index enjoyed a varied swath of Large Cap, Small Cap, and foreign company (although the DJIA was a mysterious no-show).

Conventional breadth measures show the U.S. market to be healthy, with key indexes confirming the April 24th S&P 500 high. However, sector leadership is behaving in a way that’s consistent with an approaching market top.

Seasonality rests one rung above witchcraft in the pecking order of respected analytical techniques, yet our studies haven’t been able to refute its validity. We simply don’t understand why calendar phenomena that have persisted for decades should still be around.

Emerging Market stocks are probably the cheapest equity subgroup in the world today, trading at 13.0x our 5-Year Normalized EPS estimate—much lower than that of foreign Developed Markets (17.6x) and the S&P 500 (21.3x). But, EM stocks have languished near these valuation levels for almost three years.

At a time when social media stocks are the rage, stodgy “Old Tech” has quietly tacked on a 20% gain in the 13 months since the social media peak, while the NASDAQ Internet Index is still a bit below its March 2014 high. Yet, “Old Tech” P/CF remains below the level of 1995.

Last time we updated this work, we were surprised by how much High Quality stocks had outperformed. In Q4 2014, High Quality stocks were up 9.6%, while Low Quality stocks had edged up only marginally (+0.3%).

How will today’s bull market be viewed through the eventual clarity and objectivity of hindsight? We’ve pulled together several still frames that we think best capture the essence of this historic run.

The first month of Q1 earnings for 2015 registered an Up/Down Ratio of 1.63. After three consecutive above average quarters, the ratio did a swan-dive deep into below average territory.

AdvantHedge trails S&P 500 inverse YTD; largest sector weights are Info Tech, Industrials, Energy

Select Industries purchased Drug Retail, Reinsurance; Global Industries added to Homebuilding, Electronic Equipment

Major Trend Index strengthened in April; net equity exposure increased to 61%

After residing in the 15-20% neighborhood for the past two years, the Small Cap premium may be finding a new home in the 5-10% range. Weaker earnings growth, and the outperformance of Large Caps over the last 18 months, are pushing the two P/E measurements closer to parity.

New S&P 500 bull market high on April 24^th confirmed by all manner of traditionally leading indicants.

The S&P 500 gained 0.9% (price only) in April. Based on the 1957-to-date valuation metrics presented below, downside to its historical average widened by about 1% from last month’s –18% reading.