Where Are All Of The New 52-Week Highs? by Eric Bush, CFA, Gavekal Capital Blog
A concerning trend in the equity market has been the steady decline over the past couple of years in the number of stocks that are making new 52-week price highs. Generally speaking, a steady increase in the number of stocks that are making a new 52-week high means that breadth in the equity market is strong. Consequently, one can make the leap to say that current breadth in the equity market, at least according to this metric, is weak. The most concerning detail of this series is the fact that the slowdown in new 52-week highs is very reminiscent of the 2006-2008 period, as you can see in the first chart below. However, the counter weight to this dire comparison is that we haven’t had the trending increase in the number of stocks making new 52-week lows as we did during the late 2007, early 2008 period. This can be seen in the second chart below. Sure, we have had spike of new lows over the past three months, but this looks more like the 2010, 2011 or 2014 period. In 2007, we had a steady increase in the percentage of stocks making new 52-week lows which provided some advance warning of the impending bear market.
