Don't Ignore This Chart!

Small-caps Turn Negative Year-to-Date

Arthur Hill

Arthur Hill

Chief Technical Strategist, TrendInvestorPro.com

Small-caps are still leading the market since early November, but they are lagging in 2017 as year-to-date performance turned negative. The PerfChart below shows year-to-date performance for seven major stock indexes. The Nasdaq 100 is up around 10% and leading the pack by a wide margin. The Dow Industrials, S&P 500, S&P 500 Equal-Weight Index and S&P MidCap 400 are positive year-to-date, but up significantly less than the Nasdaq 100. The Achilles heel of the market is clear when we look at the S&P Small-Cap 600 and Russell 2000, which are now negative year-to-date. We are almost three months into 2017 and these two small-cap indexes have nothing to show.


Despite relative weakness in 2017, the S&P Small-Cap 600 and Russell 2000 are still up more than the other indexes over the last 100 days (31-Oct to 24-Mar). Notice that $SML, $RUT and $INDU are up over 13.5% since November. Even so, absolute weakness in 2017 is a concern going forward because it reflects a risk-aversion within the stock market. 

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--Arthur Hill CMT

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Arthur Hill
About the author: , CMT, is the Chief Technical Strategist at TrendInvestorPro.com. Focusing predominantly on US equities and ETFs, his systematic approach of identifying trend, finding signals within the trend, and setting key price levels has made him an esteemed market technician. Arthur has written articles for numerous financial publications including Barrons and Stocks & Commodities Magazine. In addition to his Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation, he holds an MBA from the Cass Business School at City University in London. Learn More