Gavekal Capital: Europe: Short-Term Oversold

Monday, August 4, 2014

Europe: Short-Term Oversold

One of the ways we track movements in the equity markets is by considering the number of stocks in a sector trading above a moving average.  For a shorter term view, we use 20 days (trading days, not calendar days).  We calculate this breadth stat daily for all the regions and sectors in the MSCI World index.  A reading of 20% or lower--meaning less than 20% of companies in a given region or industry are above their 20-day moving average-- constitutes an oversold condition.

The MSCI World index isn't quite registering an oversold condition, helped a recently resilient Asia-Pacific. Europe is the one region where we observe a shorter term oversold condition, with only 12% of stocks in the region above their 20-day moving average.

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The only two sectors not in oversold territory by this measure are information technology and health care. Everything else is in oversold territory, with fewer than 20% of the names in each sector above their 20-day moving average.  Charts of the oversold European sectors are below.

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