Distance Below 52-Week Highs By Market Cap and Sector

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: Less than two weeks ago, we reported on where the average stock was trading with respect to its 52-week high. With the declines we have seen in the market since then, we updated the charts to see how things have progressed.

Overall, the weakness has been across the board, although certain areas of the market are holding up better than others. As we noted, it appears as though investors are gravitating towards (or at least not completely ditching) large cap stocks and reducing exposure to small and mid cap names. While the average large cap stock (S&P 500) is currently trading 12% off its 52-week high, the average mid cap stock (S&P 400) is off 14.2%. Small caps (S&P 600) have fared the worst however, as the average stock is now 18.4% below its 52-week high.

On a sector basis, two areas of the market stick out: Consumer Discretionary and Financials. These two sectors are the leaders to the downside. The average stock in the Consumer Discretionary sector is currently 18.7% below its high, while in the Financial sector the average stands at 19.8% below. Sectors which have held up the best are Industrials (-11.4%), Energy (-10.9%), and Telecom Services (-7.9%).

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Finally, we also examined the variations of declines between the different classes of market cap (large, mid, and small). The key takeaway from this chart is that just like ten days ago, the average decline from a stock's high shrinks as we move up the market cap scale.

In each of the ten sectors, small caps are the furthest from their 52-week highs, followed by mid caps and finally large caps. This trend has been the most pronounced in the Materials sector where the average large cap stock is down 9.3% from its high, while the average small cap stock is down nearly twice as much at 18.4%