Yields go up. Some stocks go up with them. CNBC Pro ran a screen to find which ones. They used sixty days of data because sixty-one would've been showing off.
The screen looked for stocks with strong negative correlations to TLT, the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF. When TLT falls, yields rise. When yields rise, these stocks supposedly benefit. This is the kind of insight that costs a subscription fee in 2026.
Correlation over sixty days. Two months. Eight weeks of price action that'll definitely predict the future because markets respect patterns the way your dog respects the invisible fence until it sees a squirrel.
The S&P 1500 was the universe. Not the S&P 500, which would've been too mainstream. Not the Russell 2000, which would've required acknowledging small caps exist outside of meme stock rallies. The S&P 1500, a Goldilocks index for people who think they're too sophisticated for the basics but not quite ready for the deep end.
Negative correlation means when one thing zigs, the other zags. This will continue working until it doesn't. Then someone will write a piece about how correlations broke down during periods of stress, as if stress is some rare market condition that only shows up during months that end in Y.
The retail trader sees this headline and thinks he's found alpha. He'll buy three of these stocks on Monday morning, watch them move in perfect lockstep with TLT for the next two weeks, then blame algos when his negative correlation thesis gets shredded by a Fed governor's eyebrow raise during a CNBC interview.
Sixty-day correlations are astrology for people who passed algebra.
Photo by Infrarate.com on Unsplash
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