Widespread Weakness in Technical Scores

As we have mentioned before, each month we score companies' technical strength relative to the benchmark.  Since a year ago, the average score for European and, to a lesser extent, North American companies has declined.  Companies in MSCI Pacific, however, seem to be recovering from weakness in the last quarter:



By sector, Health Care and Information Technology stocks continue to show the strongest trends relative to the MSCI World while Utilities and Financials are the weakest groups:



In every region, there has been a recent uptick in significant pullbacks and loss of momentum in individual stocks' relative performance.  As we mentioned last week (here), that weakness has been most prominent in European Health Care and Energy names:



In North America, it has been the Financial and Materials stocks:



And Information Technology and Consumer Staples sectors have exhibited the worst slowing trends, in general, in the Asia-Pacific region.