Sector Detector: Fast and furious selloff provides important market cleansing

April 14, 2014 at 01:54 AM EDT

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics The sudden bearish turn last week in the market — after hitting new highs the prior week — has come fast and furious as selloffs are wont to do. And the pullback might have further still to go. But there are several reasons to expect a stabilization or bounce during this holiday-shortened week, and in any case I still expect that it eventually will turn out to be a great buying opportunity leading to higher prices later in the year. The major indexes are at or near round-number support levels, including NASDAQ at 4,000, Dow Jones Industrials at 16,000, S&P 500 at 1,800, and Russell 2000 at 1,100. And from a technical standpoint, despite violating support at the 50-day simple moving average, the S&P 500 remains well within the bounds of its long-standing bullish rising channel. Among the ten U.S. business sectors, defensive sector Utilities stands alone as the year-to-date leader, up about +9% and hitting a new intraday high on Thursday. Healthcare had been keeping up for a while, but it has fallen back into the pack with the big selloff in biotech and biopharma. No doubt, investors have been protecting capital, and there has been a rotation into the blue chips as the momentum darlings have been slaughtered. Experienced traders know that, although the glamour stocks can outperform value stocks over short periods of time, history shows that ultimately the tortoise beats the hare, i.e., value wins out. As such, I would not suggest jumping back into stocks like Netflix (NFLX) or 3D Systems (DDD) that have poor earnings quality and still display high forward valuations even after their massive selloffs. So, yes, a market cleansing like this is both important and inevitable. However, as I observed last week, the market will often throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, which is a boon for savvy investors. For example, Sabrient favorites Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ) and Actavis plc (ACT) remain fundamentally sound, and their previously fair valuation is now even much more attractive. Although we will likely see positive returns in the U.S. market, many market commentators are predicting those returns to be modest in the U.S. and other developed economies this year, but better for emerging markets and potentially outstanding for frontier markets. Indeed, the IMF reported at their meeting on Saturday that…

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics

Scott Martindale The sudden bearish turn last week in the market — after hitting new highs the prior week — has come fast and furious as selloffs are wont to do. And the pullback might have further still to go. But there are several reasons to expect a stabilization or bounce during this holiday-shortened week, and in any case I still expect that it eventually will turn out to be a great buying opportunity leading to higher prices later in the year. The major indexes are at or near round-number support levels, including NASDAQ at 4,000, Dow Jones Industrials at 16,000, S&P 500 at 1,800, and Russell 2000 at 1,100. And from a technical standpoint, despite violating support at the 50-day simple moving average, the S&P 500 remains well within the bounds of its long-standing bullish rising channel.

Among the ten U.S. business sectors, defensive sector Utilities stands alone as the year-to-date leader, up about +9% and hitting a new intraday high on Thursday. Healthcare had been keeping up for a while, but it has fallen back into the pack with the big selloff in biotech and biopharma.

No doubt, investors have been protecting capital, and there has been a rotation into the blue chips as the momentum darlings have been slaughtered. Experienced traders know that, although the glamour stocks can outperform value stocks over short periods of time, history shows that ultimately the tortoise beats the hare, i.e., value wins out. As such, I would not suggest jumping back into stocks like Netflix (NFLX) or 3D Systems (DDD) that have poor earnings quality and still display high forward valuations even after their massive selloffs.

So, yes, a market cleansing like this is both important and inevitable. However, as I observed last week, the market will often throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, which is a boon for savvy investors. For example, Sabrient favorites Jazz Pharmaceuticals (JAZZ) and Actavis plc (ACT) remain fundamentally sound, and their previously fair valuation is now even much more attractive.

Although we will likely see positive returns in the U.S. market, many market commentators are predicting those returns to be modest in the U.S. and other developed economies this year, but better for emerging markets and potentially outstanding for frontier markets. Indeed, the IMF reported at their meeting on Saturday that…