speed up the economy - monday, page-2

In my Sector Performance analysis the Materials sector stood out on the basis of its consistency Q4 to Q1 and solid overall performance. The following bar chart shows the performance so far this Quarter for the stocks making up the XMJ.

The stand-out performers have been the Goldies - generally up more than 25% (aqg, evn, igo, ncm, nst, slr, wsa). ncm, nst, evn: each up more than 40%

Two non-gold oriented mining companies stand out: awc +19.8% and ozl +20%.

Building Materials companies have also done relatively well: abc +17.2%, bld +14.9%, csr +21.9%, fbu +16.6%.

The biggies BHP +3.1%, FMG +3.4%, Rio +3% underperformed the XMJ Sector +5.1%.

The "dogs": ago -5.2%, ari -3.4%, bdr -1.9%, lyc -1.7%, mgx -3.5%, nuf -9.1%, rrl -12.3%, sfr -4.8%, sgm-8.8%.

It's interesting to note that, in general, the gold miners who did well turned up in early December while the US$ POG bottomed at the start of the Santa Rally on 19 December. This is a well-known phenomenon - Gold Mining stocks tend to turn before the POG turns.

It's too early to tell for sure but it is ominous that the XGD was down in the past week -1.58% while US$ POG up +0.34%.

I've commented in the past week that the Gold Miners are overbought and likely to consolidate or pull back.

If the best performers in the XMJ (the Gold Miners) do pull back, then we might see the XMJ start to suffer in the coming month. A very speculative comment at this stage.

Redbacka