With stocks hitting new all-time highs and the dollar surging, there is trouble brewing below the surface.

Too many S&P 500 stocks are lagging
From Jason Goepfert at SentimenTrader:  “There have been numerous oddities in markets in recent days. One thing that has not been odd is market breadth. Gains in recent days have been broad-based, leading to an exceptional number of 52-week highs on Wednesday. And Thursday. That’s what makes what we’re about to look at so unusual…

Among S&P 500 stocks, fewer than 70% of them are trading above their 50-day average, and also fewer than 70% are above their 200-day average. That’s an awfully small number given that the S&P index itself has been busy closing at all-time highs.

The last time this happened was in mid-May 2015.

Comparisons To The Year 2000
We took a look at a similar divergence in the Nasdaq last November, which followed through with the typical pattern of weakness when the divergence was so stark. What’s notable about the current divergence in the S&P is that it didn’t just happen on Wednesday. Over the past three weeks, there have been 5 such days, the most since the year 2000.

On the next page, we show how many days showed similar divergences over a three-week period. For these purposes, “divergence” is defined as a day when the S&P 500 closed at a three-year high, but fewer than 75% of S&P 500 component stocks were trading above their 50-day and 200-day averages at the time….More Here