Utilities: A Contrarian Play

One of the ways we assess the technical strength or weakness of various areas of the stock market is by measuring the percent of stocks above a 200 day moving average.  When 80% of stocks are above their 200 day moving average, we consider this to be a symptom of an overbought market, and when only 20% of stocks are above their moving average, we consider this to be a symptom of an oversold market.  When we divide out all the region-sectors within the MSCI World index, there are only two that grab our attention as being oversold--North American and Asia-Pacific Utilities.