As part of our process, each month we evaluate our point-and-figure charts with a proprietary scoring model for those companies that have qualified as knowledge leaders. While this helps us spot important changes in momentum for individual stocks, we can also see trends among sectors and sub-industries.
For the MSCI World Index, the Energy sector is the highest scoring group on a relative basis while Utilities are the lowest scorers, on average:
Though Energy receives the highest overall score, the best scoring sub-industries in the MSCI World come from the Health Care, Consumer Discretionary, and Industrial sectors.
In MSCI Asia-Pacific, where no Energy stocks fulfill the requirements to be a knowledge leader, Industrials are currently the strongest sector:
Consistent with the regional trend by sector, many of the best scoring sub-industries can be found in the Industrials group while those underperforming the most are found in the Financials and Utilities sectors:
Energy and Health Care top the list in MSCI Europe as the strongest performers:
The highest and lowest scoring sub-industries in MSCI Europe are more widely distributed than the overall sector trends would suggest:
And, finally, in MSCI North America the early cyclicals look stronger than some of the more defensive groups:
By sub-industry, however, some of the highest performing groups come from the Health Care and Consumer Staples sectors: