Ending One Strange Quarter--No Other Way To Describe It

We are ending the quarter the way we lived most of it, with energy stronger and financials weaker. However, this is one of the strangest quarters in my nearly 12 years at the NYSE. Look at this strange spread between the major indices this quarter:

Dow down 7.1%
S&P 500: down 2.9%
NASDAQ up 1.2%
russell up 1.0 %
Midcap up 5.6%

Two points about this data:

1) It's the first time the Dow is down 3 quarters in a row since 1977-78.

2) The point spread between the Dow and the S&P: is the widest since Q4 2000. Why? First, many smaller cap stocks (some of which are in the S&P) did better than the larger cap stocks that are in the Dow; more importantly, financial stocks just got killed in the Dow.

Dow financials this quarter:

AIGdown 39%
BofAdown 37%
Citi down 22%
JP Morgan down 20%

Little wonder that financials are among the big sector losers this quarter:

Housing down 25%
Banks down 26%
Airlines down 40%

While the sector gainers are the usual suspects...energy:

Sector gainers Q2
Oil services up 26%
Natural gas up 24%
Oil stocks up 15%

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