The S&P 500 is one number doing the work of five hundred stocks. It can hide whether participation is broad, narrow, improving, or failing.
The Trend Participation Matrix shows the percentage of index members trading above six moving averages. Read it left to right: what’s happening now, then whether the weakness has reached the intermediate and long-term trend.
Short-term participation weakened hard.
Only 37% of S&P 500 stocks are above their 5-day average. Forty-nine percent remain above the 20-day. Energy and Technology are the only sectors with majority participation above the 5-day.
Utilities, Consumer Staples, Consumer Discretionary, and Communications are weakest.
This wasn’t a clean rotation into defensive safety. Utilities and Staples sit at the bottom of the table. The selling reached nearly everything.
The longer-term picture still looks different.
Fifty-nine percent of the index remains above its 50-day average. Sixty-three percent remains above its 200-day. Nine of eleven sectors still have more than half their stocks above the 200-day.
Only Consumer Discretionary and Communications fall below that threshold.
Financials shows the split best.
Just 34% of financial stocks are above the 5-day average. Yet 82% are above the 20-day, 86% above the 50-day, and 88% above the 100-day. More than 70% remain above both the 150- and 200-day averages.
One of the market’s strongest intermediate trends took one of its hardest short-term hits.
The Matrix is a read on participation, not a trigger. It tells us how broad a move is — not when to act. A short-term break becomes more consequential as context when it lasts long enough to weaken participation across the moving averages that define the broader trend.
That broader weakening hasn’t happened.
Our decisions aren’t driven by moving averages. Our exits are defined by portfolio risk, predefined stops, and evidence of regime change — set before conditions like this show up. If the trend holds, exposure can remain. If our actual risk signals turn, risk comes down.
Right now, the red is concentrated on the left.
We’ll act on evidence — not on this table alone.
Mike Shell is the founder and chief investment officer of Shell Capital Management, LLC, a registered investment adviser. He serves as portfolio manager of ASYMMETRY®Managed Portfolios, a separately managed account program with trade execution and custody provided by Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions.
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