Offense or Defense
Igor Manukhov - Jul 21, 2023
Growth areas are prevailing at this time. Time to play offense.
The market continues its rebound. Of course there will be an occasional pullback, but the medium term trend seem to be pointing upwards. Part of my process is to track a series of indicators to try to determine the likelihood of a possible reversal or get extra reassurance that the current trend is here to stay. One of the ratios that I like to keep an eye on is the relative performance of growth stocks (offense) vs lower volatility stocks (defense). The top panel of the chart below shows the relative performance of growth stocks vs lower volatility stocks. Markets tend to do better when growth is outperforming (the green line on the bottom represents the S&P500 index). Markets tend to struggle when defensive stocks do better than growth (vertical lines). The only exception to this rule was 2020. Growth stocks (mostly technology) had such a great start of the year that the ratio barely budged during the pandemic.
At this time, it appears that this ratio is consistent with the bull market thesis. After the recent rally, stocks are a bit overbought on the short term, however considering this ac constructive picture on the longer time frame, I would recommend to take advantage of market dips to add to your equity positions.