(New York)
How do you know when the market is bad? When the safest stocks are also the best performing. It sounds like an old market joke, but it couldn’t be more true right now. Stocks are down around 10% this month, the worst December since the Great Depression. A good sample of these low volatility stocks can be found in Invesco’s S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF (SPLV). That ETF has fallen just 7% from the market’s September peak, while the S&P 500 has fallen 16%. Looking at correlations, the majority of stocks with the best 90-day momentum are also those with the lowest volatility.
FINSUM: The market is playing defense, and with good reason.