Leaders Of European Performance... Are Utilities

Over the last 20 days, as stock markets around the world have recovered from their January sell-offs, an interesting thing has happened.  Defensive stocks are leading the rebound.  As an example, in the MSCI World Europe index, the utility sector is the best performer, up 7.57% on average.

MSCI Europe Sector Performance


The move has been a pretty powerful one too, as measured by the following stats:
1) Over 100% of the 21 European utilities are above their 20 day moving average



2) 71% are making new 20 day highs



3) 100% of the companies have realized positive performance over the last 20 days



4) 65% of all trading days have been up days for the sector