Chart-in-Focus: Are Markets Getting Defensive? Sector Rotations Tell A Story

We are late in publishing the April 2023 edition of Chart-in-Focus; we waited for the month to end as we wanted to take a look at the sector rotation as a whole and not at a particular stock given the important juncture the Indices are placed at.

The markets have had an excellent run over the past couple of weeks. The equities have been on a roll; what performed badly last year is playing excellent catchup. Take for example these three key US Indices; DJIA, NASDAQ, and SPX.

If we take a look at Year-to-Date (YTD) performance, the reading conrms the above interpretation. NASDAQ has been the best performing index returning a positive of 17.71%, SPX and DJIA returned 9.03% and 2.90% respectively. While the structure of the chart remains buoyant, the VIX, the volatility gauge, has been consistently falling.