Retail Investors Had Been Outperforming the Market Since May. Not Any More

Retail investors had a pretty strong two-month stretch when they were outperforming the broader market by as much as 10 percentage points.

That’s now come to a close. 

Goldman Sachs’ basket of retail favorites, for the first time since early May, is now underperforming the S&P 500 over 52 weeks.

It is still, to be fair, a solid performance — a gain of 14% vs. the 20% advance for the S&P 500 over the same time period.

It’s a case where technical indicators seemed to have worked. The basket’s relative strength index surpassed the 70 level indicating overbought conditions at the end of May, peaking at 74.88, according to Goldman data.

The RSI has now fallen dramatically, to 37.86, a level still above the 30 mark indicating oversold conditions.

That basket of stocks, which the bank first put together in 2020, is rebalanced every quarter based on an analysis of retail trading flows. It’s overwhelmingly tilted toward tech stocks, notably CrowdStrike, Advanced Micro Devices and Micron Technology. Semis and equipment make up nearly a fifth of the holdings.

It’s also notable where retail investors are missing out. The retail basket is underweight financials, with little exposure to healthcare, at a time when both sectors are breaking out.

On a price-to-earnings basis, the basket is actually looking attractive. At 22.3 times the next 12 month earnings, it’s approaching the 20.6 mark which would be in the tenth-lowest percentile.