Last week’s 4.5% market correction pulled the rug out from under most assets. Based on my ETF Master list, which contains 497 ETFs representing just about every sector imaginable, I was curious to see which assets held up best and with ones suffered the most.
While obviously all bear market funds/ETFs had an up week, it is too early to get exposure to that area since the long term trend lines of the Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) are still in bullish territory.
Bucking the pullback last week (not counting bear funds) were the following:
TF (Country fund): +3.42%
FXY (Currency): +1.98%
USO (Oil): +1.60%
IEF (Bond): +1.41%
The only equity ETF to stay even was DIA (Large Value: +0.00%), all others went negative. The honors for worst performance of the week goes to IIH (Technology), which dropped an amazing -11.69%. That was closely followed by XME (Metals & Mining) with a loss of -10.99%.
My point is that very few areas survived last week’s pull back. There is no sense in trying to make adjustments to your portfolio at this time, since in the current corrective environment last week’s winners can easily be next week’s losers.
Stick to holding your positions subject to your sell stop rules and make adjustments into better performing sectors at a later time once the markets have calmed down and the direction of the trend becomes clearer.
Right now the markets are in no man’s land, and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether we are heading further south into bear territory or whether a turn around to greener pastures is imminent. This is the time to be patient and avoid making irrational decisions.