Consumer Staples Looks Attractive

The market is still trading in a tight range. The past few trading sessions has seen the market sell off initially but recoup most if its losses by the close. It’s a good sign that we are not seeing heavy institutional selling.

On the daily SPX chart, we see a symmetrical triangle has developed signifying listless direction. A big volume break up or down may determine the overall direction of the market through the end of the year.

We are leaning towards a break to the upside for a few reasons.

(1) Earnings season is beginning and the preliminary movements in earnings estimates have been favorable as we pointed out in our recent blog post Positioning for 4Q16.

(2) A December rate hike is currently reflected in equity prices.

(3) The Trump campaign appears to be imploding.

(4) In most cases a symmetrical triangle breaks in the direction of the overall trend. Since February that trend has been up.

(5) The Nasdaq and Russell 2000 small caps are performing better than the S&P 500 and are leading the overall market trend higher (meaning they are or are close to holding their 20DMA.)

We have deployed some cash in the portfolio but will get more aggressive should we break to the upside. If we are wrong on our analysis, we will pull positions off and await a better entry.

Consumer Staples

The consumer staples sector has been taking a beating. Over the past ten weeks only utilities have performed worse relative to the S&P 500.

We consider this a buying opportunity and are going to take a position in the consumer staples sector for several reasons.

The fundamental picture has been steadily improving since the end of 1Q16 as seen by the EPS, book value and cash flow trends.

Both earnings and book value per share have a meaningful impact on sector valuation. With twelve month eps forecasts around $27.43 and trailing twelve-month book value per share near $101.66 for the sector, we estimate the sector to be 10% to 15% undervalued.

Our value variance measure that examines the distance between current index prices and perceived fair value is over two standard deviations from the mean. That has represented great entry points for opportunistic trading scenarios in the past.

We also track the rate of change of the value variance to determine the magnitude of the sell-off. This acts as a confirmation of the value variance measure. The chart below highlights the confirmation pattern of the value variance buy signals.

While the fundamental screening process is giving us a buy signal, the technical picture looks a bit rough but one can determine key levels of support that may confirm our investment thesis. On the daily consumer discretionary the index is sitting on the 200DMA that has held as the final front of support on several occasions. We are also seeing a potential bullish divergence between pricing and RSI and MACD. The volume momentum and breadth momentum indicators are also showing waning negative deterioration and a possible bullish divergence.

On the weekly consumer staples chart the uptrend remains in place and the index is sitting near the 50WMA which has acted as support in the past. RSI (14) remains at or near the 50 level and given the improving fundamental picture there isn’t any reason to believe that these previous support levels will fail.

Happy Trading!

Joseph S. Kalinowski, CFA