Lately, it is not only the stock market that

While it may seem like stocks are going up everywhere, one country where they have not been recently is Mexico. Due

After falling 84% from high to low during the financial crisis, the S&P 500 financial sector is now up 231% from its low back in 2009. As shown in the long-term chart below, the sector has really charged higher this year, breaking out of a multi-year sideways range that had been in place. That being said, the chart really shows just how far the financial sector still has to go to get back to where it was pre-crisis.

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The rally in financial stocks has coincided with a big drop in default risk for stocks in the sector. Below we provide charts of five-year credit default swap prices (in basis points) for the six largest banks and brokers here in the U.S. The price shown is basically the yearly cost in dollars to insure $10,000 of debt from default over the next five years. As shown, default risk

The S&P 500's P/E ratio has been seeing some pretty rapid expansion this year as the market has charged higher. As shown below, last year at this time the S&P's trailing 12 months P/E ratio was below 14. Now it's up to 16.13.

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While the one-year P/E ratio chart above looks pretty alarming, a longer-term chart looks much less so. Below is a chart

After several weeks of better than expected reports, Thursday morning's reading of initial jobless claims for the latest week came in significantly higher than expected (360K vs 330K). It was also the highest weekly reading since late March. Initial jobless claims had a been a bright spot over the last several weeks even as most other data was weaker than expected, so today's report was a disappointment for bulls.

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The market is on quite a run right now, and it has pushed 90% of the stocks in the S&P 500 above their 50-day moving averages. Below is a list of the 40 stocks in the index that are the farthest above their 50-days as of late Tuesday afternoon. Keep in mind that 10% above the 50-day is pretty high, so the fact that all of the stocks shown below are more than 11.5% above their 50-days is pretty crazy.

As shown below, Advanced Micro (AMD) tops the list at more than 50% above its 50-day! First Solar (FSLR) ranks second at 44.58% above, followed by Regeneron Pharma (REGN), GameStop (GME) and Actavis (ACT). Other notables on the list include Netflix (NFLX), JC Penney (JCP), Biogen (BIIB), Whole Foods (WFM), Coach (COH), Disney (DIS)

Below is a list of 2013 and quarter-to-date stock market returns for 77 countries around the world. Of the 77 countries shown, 60 are in the green for the year, while 17 are in the red. As shown, Japan is now up the most of any country with a YTD gain of 45.22%. Japan is already up 21.76% in the second quarter as well. This gain of 21.76% for Japan doesn't even rank it first for the second quarter, however. Greece is actually doing the best of any country in the second quarter with a gain of 28.13%. Dubai ranks second for the quarter with a gain of 25%.

On the downside, Peru has been the worst country so far this year with a decline of 15.73%. The Ukraine ranks second to last with a decline of 10.44%, followed by Colombia at -9.8%. Two BRICs round out the

Below is a look at our trading range charts for the S&P 500 and its 10 sectors. In each chart, the blue shading represents the sector's "normal" trading range, which is between one standard deviation above and below its 50-day moving average (white line). The red zone represents between one and two standard deviations above the 50-day, and vice versa for the green zone. Moves into or above the red zone are considered "overbought," while moves into or below the green zone are considered "oversold."

As shown, the S&P 500 has pretty much been trading in overbought territory all year now, and the index is currently at its most overbought levels in more than a year. Stocks and indices can stay overbought for a long time, but historically they have not remained as extended as the S&P is now for too long. We would expect some sort of cool down

Today's release of weekly energy inventories from the Department of Energy (DoE) showed an unexpected decrease in crude oil inventories and an unexpected build in gasoline stockpiles. In the crude oil space, traders were expecting inventories to rise by 450,000 barrels, but actual inventories declined by 624,000 barrels. Even

Bulls looking for some confirmation of recent better-than-expected economic data did not get it this morning from the Empire Manufacturing report (or for that matter, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization). While economists were forecasting the headline reading to increase from +3 to +4, the actual reading came in weaker than expected at -1.4, and it represented the lowest reading since January.

This month's reading showed broad based weakness as seven out of the 10 subcomponents were negative and none of the categories showed an increase vs. April's reading.

While Prices Paid currently has the highest reading at 20.5, it also saw the largest decline on the month as it was at a level of 28.4 last month. After Prices Paid, the next largest decline came in the Average Workweek, which fell from 5.7 in April to negative 1.1 in May. The decline in the average workweek comes on the heels

As of this morning, 88% of S&P 500 companies are trading above their 50-day moving averages. This is a very high reading, but it's not quite as high as the reading we saw back in January.

(click to enlarge)Looking at the ten major sectors, the Consumer Discretionary

By Sumit Roy

The chart below is from our recent newsletter, and it shows the average yield to maturity on the

Short interest figures for the end of April were released late last week, and below we provide a table of the stocks in the S&P 1500 with the highest short interest as a percentage of float. Topping this month's list are shares of Blyth (BTH), which has more than two-thirds of its free-floating shares sold short. While BTH may not be a household name, there are plenty of more recognizable names on the list, including Coinstar (CSTR), J.C. Penney (JCP), GameStop (GME), SUPERVALU (SVU), 3D Systems (DDD), and United States Steel (X).

For the 25 names listed below, we have also calculated their performance since April 30. To bring home the point about how hard it has been to be short the market in recent weeks, only three of the stocks (BTH, CRR, and COCO) are down so far in May. Overall, the average

The "Sell in May" theory has been turned on its head so far this year. As shown in the left-hand side of our key ETF matrix below, US equities have jumped out of the gate strong over the first 8 trading days of May. The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) and Smallcap 600 (IJR) have rallied the most with gains of more than 3% already, while the Smallcap 600 Growth ETF (IJT) is up even more at 4.03%. The rally we've seen to start the month has been led by cyclical sectors like Industrials (XLI) and Consumer Discretionary (XLY). The weakness in defensive sectors has been notable as well. The Utilities ETF (XLU) is actually down 3.86% on the month, leaving it up just 14.06% on the year. XLU had been one of the best performing sectors over the first four months of 2013, but now it has moved down to the

More than 2,000 companies have reported earnings so far this season, which ends next Thursday when Wal-Mart (WMT) reports. So far this season, the spread between the percentage of companies raising guidance minus those lowering guidance has been -2.9 percentage points. This means that more companies have lowered guidance than raised guidance, and if it holds in negative territory, it will be the seventh straight quarter with a negative guidance

About 500 companies reported earnings this week, pushing the total number of companies that have reported this season up to more than 2,100. While the market is up on the week, earnings haven't been great. At the start of the week, the percentage of companies that had beaten earnings estimates this season stood above 59%. The additional 500-plus companies that reported this week only beat earnings at