AI-Generated Summary
Karen Finerman, Dan Nathan, and Katie Stockton discussed a notable market rotation away from 2024’s top-performing stocks and sectors, such as tech and semiconductors, toward previously lagging areas like small caps, healthcare, retail (e.g., Target), and insurers. This shift, occurring at the start of the second half of the year, may reflect portfolio reallocations and a reassessment of valuations, particularly with the S&P 500 appearing overbought (RSI ~27). While tech giants like Nvidia and the “Magnificent Seven” remain strong, investors are diversifying into cheaper, oversold sectors. Factors contributing to the rotation include quarter-end window dressing, interest rate sensitivity, and regulatory uncertainties, such as new legislation impacting specific industries. Overall, the move signals a potential broadening of market leadership beyond tech.
📜 Full Transcript
Karen Finerman, Dan Nathan and Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner at Fairlead strategies. Welcome, Katie. Thank you. And we start off with the seeming shift out of this year’s best performing stocks and sectors to some of the biggest laggards, the Nasdaq climbing to new records to close out the first half. Semis far outperforming the broader market. And names like Netflix, Palantir, Coinbase all soared. But today all those trades were losing steam. Meantime, the long underperforming small caps they jumped today. So the defensive healthcare names retailers like target insurers and staples. So what do you make of this broad rotation. What does it say about where to go in the second half of the year? Tim, you said earlier on our call it was like a switch flipped. >> It felt like it. And I don’t know who flipped the switch. And I don’t think there was any major strategy report out there. But but it’s very clear. You know, we watched we’ve watched interest rates kind of trickle lower since the third week in May. And yet homebuilders are up 4% today as a group, which are highly sensitive to interest rates, even on a day when rates trickled up a little bit higher. In other words, this wasn’t a big interest rate day. It was a day when I think you saw lagging sectors and sectors that that I really wanted to see follow through and sectors that could conceivably have been rallying with banks and some of the broader stuff outside of technology were not. But healthcare had a really nice day. Oil services had a really nice day, and that’s kind of hard to figure, too, given the fact that now we’re in this place with oil where we really don’t know where we are, but I think it’s a reassessment of where some of those growth trades that were destroyed and just destroyed going into Liberation Day and haven’t really come out, and some of that is very clear. The other thing is, you know, whether we talked about it with Lori yesterday or whether you’re listening to any strategists on the street talk about their forward, you know, their forward PE on the S&P right now is, you know, 258 I think she said yesterday, we’re talking about 20 almost 24 times forward. So I think this is a place where people are looking at. I don’t think you get too far away from the trades that have worked here today. But I think some of these trades, yes, it’s game on. >> So we all thought the same thing on the call today was really so notable. So many industries you know. So I looked at retail also out of nowhere right. So we saw target up huge, Abercrombie up huge for no particular reason other than that to me they seem to be attractive because they’re very cheap relative to what has been working. Doesn’t make me want to abandon my mag seven exposure, but it is notable how long it lasts. I don’t know, I thought the health care thing was interesting. Something like banks did nicely, but I think still staying with that for sure and we’ll get to that later. It was very interesting though, that just why all of a sudden did that just giant portfolio reallocation. >> It was like I mean S&P 500 PE is 27 or so, right. The SRT for instance, it’s sub 20. I mean, it’s sort of like people looked at these valuations and thought it’s time to go elsewhere, or at least diversify beyond Mag seven. I actually think it’s. >> Highly related to the fact that we just saw the second half begin. Right. So it’s the timing of it that I think is reflective of what’s happening. I think in the last week or so, we saw this big run up in the S&P 500. Probably part of that was window dressing on behalf of fund managers trying to make their portfolios look better at quarter end. And then when you remove that phenomenon, perhaps there’s still bullishness out there. Obviously there’s risk on positioning. But they might be then saying okay, you know I’ve got what I’m going to get out of Nvidia. Perhaps now I’m going to source oversold sectors oversold groups relative to the broader market for opportunities. >> Yeah I don’t think it’s particularly bullish though what we saw today. And again I think to your point, you probably saw a little bit of a markup in the quarter end. S&P was really not able to make a meaningful new high closed unchanged. On the day you saw the Nasdaq closed down nearly 1%. Obviously that’s the heavy lifting of the mag 7 or 8 or whatever the heck you want to call them. But then when you look at the regional banks, you know, the relative outperformance to the major banks, which have been trading pretty well, and then the Russell 2000 up a percent. So I look at that and I just say the money’s got to go somewhere, you know. And but I just think that the S&P here is getting really overbought. If you look at it when Tim’s RSI is right what do you do a 14 day. >> RSI a nine day. >> Guy actually yeah. >> I’d ask Katie I mean if I’m going to listen to you. >> But you’re like the RSI guy. >> Well there’s a time and a place. >> So it’s looking a little. It’s looking a. >> Little you by the way. Thank you. It’s looking a little nice. >> Looking a little overbought to me. >> I just want to add one thing that maybe helped this rotation somewhat more is in the big beautiful bill. There was that I that states would have the opportunity to have some control over I which hadn’t been there. That was something new. And I think that sort of added fuel to the fire, to the all right, let’s let’s get out of that sector. It’s a little too hot right now, especially with this new bill. >> But you can also make the case, I mean, like, you know, the cryptos are the are the czar. That’s like, what’s his name? But buddy that’s Musk’s you know, you look at what like what just went on between those two guys again the Trump and Musk I mean those guys are going to be out a lot of those Doge guys left. So these tech guys are going to be out. And that was the voice for these industries one way or another. So again, I don’t think that the deregulation that a lot of folks thought that they were going to get by, all these CEOs lining up behind Trump is going to really happen. If you look at just Apple, we were talking about yesterday that D.O.J. Suit that’s not going away. You know, a lot