Stock recovery gets its groove back after a week of false starts

Bloomberg

Bulls wondering if a rally would ever hold again got an answer on February 23, as a rousing advance in the S&P 500 salvaged the week and nearly erased losses from the worst day of the February selloff.
Following three days in which every gain proved ephemeral, the 1.6 percent surge left the benchmark gauge for US equities up 0.6 percent for the holiday-shortened week. Gains remained concentrated in a handful of economically sensitive sectors, with technology and commodity companies rising 1 percent or more over the four sessions.
At 2,747.3, the S&P 500 finished the week within 1 percent of its closing level on February 2, the day before one of the worst single-day plunges in seven years caused the VIX to double and set off a chain reaction that resulted in the liquidation of exchange-traded notes tied to stock market turbulence.
“It just goes to show that a lot of this volatility on the downside is just phony,” said Donald Selkin, New York-based chief market strategist at Newbridge Securities Corp., which manages $2 billion.
Bulls have expressed occasional frustration with the recovery’s uneven breadth, that while benchmarks held their ground it’s been on the back of a narrowing number of gainers.
About half of stocks are trading above their 50-day average, a break from past dip-buying frenzies that were marked by cathartic purchasing.
For now, a lot of the price action looks ascribable to charts. Before Friday, a succession of rallies in the S&P 500 had all lost steam at a specific level, the 50-day moving average.
John Augustine, chief investment officer for Huntington Private Bank in Columbus, Ohio, said the market is likely to be influenced by the price level—2.730.88—until at least first-quarter earnings season begins in April.
“The 50-day is the battle line,” he said.
While groups like tech, utilities and retailers have bounced nearly all the way back amid the rally, industries from energy to consumer staples and telecom remain about 7 percent or more below their levels at the market’s peak. For those who saw the spectre of an overheating economy driving price action, there are signs the threat is still on people’s radars.
“It will be a very different type of market that will emerge from this period of turbulence,” said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer of Marketfield Asset Management. While the S&P 500 will eventually surpass its old record, he wrote, “We would expect to see gains concentrated in economically sensitive portions of the market that show the ability to either contain costs or pass them on to their customer base.”
Back of the envelope, a rough gauge of pricing power might be the durability of profit margins. And over the past five years, technology and industrial companies have seen the biggest increase in those.
“The point about pricing power is definitely reflecting itself in the markets because utilities, telecom and staples, they’ve got a tough time passing that along, but financials can directly benefit from higher interest rates,” said Don Townswick, the director of equities at Hartford, Connecticut-based Conning Inc, which manages $121 billion.