Small-Caps Aren't Living Large Anymore

The stock market has a problem, and it's not even that the so-called major averages were struggling again and accelerating to the downside as of this writing -- most notably the Nasdaq Composite, recently down 2.2%. Rather, it's that small-cap proxies have shown a nagging bit of relative weakness of late, underperforming on the upside during Wednesday's big rally and showing more weakness since.

For example, the Russell 2000 was recently down 1.3% to 495.04, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.3% and the S&P 500 was lower by 0.8%.

But more importantly, and troubling to those with a technical bent, the Russell was trading below its 50-day moving average of about 503.50, having breached Tuesday's intraday low of 498.97 in today's session, reaching a nadir of 493.78. ...