Russell Weakness

But when I saw her smile across the crowded room
Well I knew we'd have to leave the party soon
As the band began to play out of tune
--The Hooters

Those feeling bearish about domestic stock markets at this point are probably looking for signals that the trend may be about to change. A few of those signals seem to be appearing, e.g., higher interest rates, weakness in financials.

There is also a long held tenet that bull markets on the verge of flipping over will demonstrate weakness in the most speculative segments first. One of those segments is smaller cap stocks.

The Russell 2000 has indeed shown some weakness recently--certainly underperforming the larger cap indexes which are close to marking all-time highs. Technically, a multi-month uptrend in the RUT has broken down:

To be fair, however, this weakness is very short term. When time horizon is elongated, the breakdown shown above seems less onerous in the larger scheme of things:

That said, tremors often precede earthquakes.

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