Sector Detector: With the Fed fading into shadows, investors look overseas for new catalysts

January 25, 2015 at 23:25 PM EST

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics Last week, the S&P 500 put an end to its streak of weekly losses, despite giving back some gains on Friday. Thursday provided the big catalyst, with the ECB’s announcement of its bold new monetary stimulus plan. Investors were cheered and soothed for the moment. And U.S. fundamentals still look strong. But with Greece trying to turn back time, with volatility elevated (and likely to continue as such), and with the technical situation still dicey, the near term outlook is still worrisome. In this weekly update, I give my view of the current market environment, offer a technical analysis of the S&P 500 chart, review our weekly fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten U.S. business sectors, and then offer up some actionable trading ideas, including a sector rotation strategy using ETFs and an enhanced version using top-ranked stocks from the top-ranked sectors. Market overview: Despite the positive turn in the markets last week, this week has already brought a whole new set of issues to weigh on investors’ minds, starting with Sunday’s snap vote in Greece, which apparently has enough of the pain of austerity. Voters want to return to the past by rolling back austerity measures and thumbing their collective nose at the Eurozone and the broader international community of lenders. In reaction, the euro fell even further than it did in the face of the ECB’s stimulus announcement last week. The ECB seeks to inflate asset prices and encourage hiring through an open-ended sovereign quantitative easing program that will inject 60 billion euros into European debt securities each month from March 2015 until at least September 2016. Heck, if it helped the U.S. recover, then why not try it everywhere? ECB President Mario Draghi, insisted that stimulus must be accompanied by reforms, because monetary policy alone will not be enough. But Europe still pines for the good old days that, unfortunately, are nothing more than nostalgia. There is a very real danger that their QE won’t work like it did here, since the U.S. is considered the heart of the global economy and weakness here means weakness everywhere. Without structural reforms, the Eurozone could suffer the same fate as emerging markets in the 1990s. Global investors would love to see economic recovery and strength in European equities. But without an expectation of real…

Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics

Last week, the S&P 500 put an end to its streak of weekly losses, despite giving back some gains on Friday. Thursday provided the big catalyst, with the ECB’s announcement of its bold new monetary stimulus plan. Investors were cheered and soothed for the moment. And U.S. fundamentals still look strong. But with Greece trying to turn back time, with volatility elevated (and likely to continue as such), and with the technical situation still dicey, the near term outlook is still worrisome.

In this weekly update, I give my view of the current market environment, offer a technical analysis of the S&P 500 chart, review our weekly fundamentals-based SectorCast rankings of the ten U.S. business sectors, and then offer up some actionable trading ideas, including a sector rotation strategy using ETFs and an enhanced version using top-ranked stocks from the top-ranked sectors.

Market overview:

Despite the positive turn in the markets last week, this week has already brought a whole new set of issues to weigh on investors’ minds, starting with Sunday’s snap vote in Greece, which apparently has enough of the pain of austerity. Voters want to return to the past by rolling back austerity measures and thumbing their collective nose at the Eurozone and the broader international community of lenders. In reaction, the euro fell even further than it did in the face of the ECB’s stimulus announcement last week.

The ECB seeks to inflate asset prices and encourage hiring through an open-ended sovereign quantitative easing program that will inject 60 billion euros into European debt securities each month from March 2015 until at least September 2016. Heck, if it helped the U.S. recover, then why not try it everywhere? ECB President Mario Draghi, insisted that stimulus must be accompanied by reforms, because monetary policy alone will not be enough. But Europe still pines for the good old days that, unfortunately, are nothing more than nostalgia.

There is a very real danger that their QE won’t work like it did here, since the U.S. is considered the heart of the global economy and weakness here means weakness everywhere. Without structural reforms, the Eurozone could suffer the same fate as emerging markets in the 1990s. Global investors would love to see economic recovery and strength in European equities. But without an expectation of real…