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The Extreme Movers Message: Energy Gone Wild

Written by: Michael Gayed 01/24/13 - 2:08 PM EST
Tickers in this article: EEM EZA GDX GEX IEX ITB NKY SIL SLV TAN TUR USDJPY=X XLB
Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

--William Shakespeare

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- In last week's Extreme Movers Message, I noted "the areas which are rallying are those which are not highly focused on by the mainstream investor." The eclectic mix I was highlighting was somewhat all over the place on the extreme winners side, with the Yen (FXY) being the top loser.

This time around, a lot appears to have changed, as a more consistent message is seen within the market.

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Every week I run a screen on the over 1000 ETFs/ETNs I track to identify those areas of the investable landscape which are exhibiting extreme price behavior relative to their own respective 20-day moving averages. The idea is to see if there is a message happening beneath the surface of the market by looking at the opposite ends of winners and losers spectrum over a rolling 1-month period. Take a look below for the latest results.

The Extreme Winners this week are largely energy plays, as the sector catches up finally to the industrial trade, which has been fairly strong over the past couple of months. Solar (TAN) continues to be on fire, alongside oil equipment and services (IEZ) and global alternative energy (GEX) , presumably because these areas completely failed to lead as materials (XLB) and emerging markets (EEM) powered higher.

Markets have a funny way of causing big moves on lagged responses to old sentiment. Turkey (TUR) continues to perform strongly on credit upgrade watch, and home construction (ITB) momentum persists on an improving housing market.

It is interesting to note that while silver (SLV) made the Extreme Winners list, global silver miners (SIL) appear on the Extreme Losers. The divergence may be due to social unrest at a number of mines, which in turn probably also explains why South Africa (EZA) has performed poorly, alongside the Gold Miners ETF (GDX) .

While the yen is not as weak as it was last week, note that the Nikkei (NKY) has worsened a bit as investors wonder if the move up has been too far too fast. I suspect sentiment toward international stocks is waning, and that Asia more generally could begin to underperform meaningfully.