Equities began the week with a relief rally, but renewed pressure from rising yields and unresolved Middle East tensions soon tested that optimism. The conflict’s potential effects extend beyond energy, bringing agricultural markets into focus. This week’s Equity Leaders Weekly looks at what SIA’s technical readings are showing across a broad agriculture fund and our Grain Futures Equal Weight Index.
Escalating Middle East supply concerns have pushed energy markets back to the forefront, with disruptions to key transportation corridors helping drive strength in crude oil, natural gas, and refined products while shifting investor focus toward the sustainability of global energy flows. Against this backdrop, WTI Crude continues to encounter a major long-term resistance zone at $111, although Energy Futures maintain a perfect SMAX score of 10, highlighting continued leadership versus cash, bonds, equities, currencies, and the broader commodity complex. Within energy equities, the sector’s rise from an unfavored position in June to the top-ranked sector by early September was accompanied by a surge in bullish participation, yet the recent decline in the Energy Bullish Percent Index to 37.5% suggests breadth is narrowing even as relative strength remains firmly positive, creating an important framework for monitoring what may come next.
The AI boom is creating a powerful new demand for electricity, but meeting that demand will require enormous investment in generation, transmission and grid infrastructure. At the same time, the 30-year Treasury yield is breaking higher, potentially creating a more challenging financing environment for one of the market’s most capital-intensive sectors. With utility relative strength weakening, the emerging question may not be whether America needs more power, but how that power will be financed and at what cost.
As Canada-U.S. trade tensions evolve, advisors need observable signals—not forecasts—to distinguish ordinary market volatility from a meaningful shift in market conditions. Three relationships offer a disciplined framework for doing so: CAD/USD, the TSX versus the S&P 500, and Canadian small caps versus large caps. By focusing on specific levels and changes in relative strength, investors can let the market reveal when tariff-driven risks are becoming significant rather than trying to predict what happens next.
Investing requires managing not only markets, but also our own biases. A disciplined, data-driven process helps separate evidence from emotion and opinion. The goal is not to predict the market, but to recognize when the evidence tells us we are wrong.
The banking sector has quietly begun outperforming the broader market, raising questions about what investors may be anticipating. Historically, improving relative strength in financials has often coincided with strengthening economic expectations, though no single indicator should be viewed in isolation. This report examines the technical evidence, market breadth, and sector leadership to determine whether the trend is gaining broader confirmation.
The Energy sector has contributed to the S&P/TSX Composite Index’s recent strength, supported in part by rising crude oil prices and heightened geopolitical tensions. Beyond its performance, several leading energy names also offer dividend yields that may appeal to income-oriented investors. This week’s Equity Leaders Weekly examines the sector’s recent returns, relative strength leadership, and income profile.
For the past several years, a handful of mega-cap technology companies have carried an outsized share of market performance. Today, relative strength evidence suggests a different story may be emerging, with the Russell 2000 significantly outperforming the Magnificent 7 over both quarterly and year-to-date periods. While large-cap technology remains influential, improving participation across a wider group of companies could point to a healthier and more broadly supported market environment.
Point & Figure charts are designed to focus on evidence rather than emotion, filtering out day-to-day volatility and highlighting meaningful shifts in supply and demand. Despite ongoing headline-driven uncertainty, both the NASDAQ Composite and Russell 2000 continue to trade in columns of X’s with strong relative strength characteristics, suggesting buyers may still hold the edge. Until key support levels are violated and a confirmed reversal emerges, the prevailing technical evidence continues to favor demand.
Point & Figure relative strength analysis provides a disciplined framework for identifying where market leadership is emerging by filtering out short-term price noise and focusing on meaningful trends. By following the progression of capital from broad market indexes to leading sectors and ultimately to individual stocks, investors can pinpoint the areas demonstrating the greatest relative strength. This top-down approach helps reveal developing opportunities before they become widely recognized by the broader market.
Receive a daily newsletter with stock highlights, ETF rankings, weekly market focus and others.
