US Dollar Breakout & Growth Counter-Cyclical Outperformance

The trade weighted US Dollar broke out of a four year range in the last couple days, eclipsing the June 2010 highs.  Alongside this breakout in the USD, North American growth counter-cyclicals have made a new high in relative performance compared to the MSCI World Index.  Growth counter-cyclicals are stocks in the consumer staple and health care sectors.



North America health care stocks are the strongest driver of this trend in growth counter-cyclical outperformance.  Our equal-weighted basket of 66 North American health care companies are up 15.61% on average year-to-date, outperforming the MSCI World index by some 10%.  Our equal-weighted basket of 50 North American consumer staple companies are up 9.4% year-to-date and has outperformed the MSCI World index by 4% year-to-date.