Pfizer is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical firms, with annual sales close to $50 billion (excluding covid-19-related product sales). While it historically sold many types of healthcare products and chemicals, now prescription drugs and vaccines account for the majority of sales. Top sellers include pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar 13, cancer drug Ibrance, and cardiovascular treatment Eliquis. Pfizer sells these products globally, with international sales representing close to 50% of total sales. Within international sales, emerging markets are a major contributor.

GE Aerospace is a global aerospace propulsion, services, and systems leader with an installed base of approximately 44,000 commercial and 26,000 military aircraft engines. Based in Ohio, the company has 52,000 employees. GE shares are a component of the S&P 500.

It is hard to find anything but good news in the current weekly insider-sentiment data from Vickers Stock Research. Volatility remains the order of the day in the stock market -- but for three consecutive weeks, the data from Vickers has suggested a bottom may be near, or already in. Let's jump right to the numbers. Vickers' NYSE One-Week Sell/Buy Ratio is 1.30 this week, this on a scale where anything below 2.00 is bullish. The ratio has been bullish for the past three weeks. Moving to the Nasdaq, the one-week ratio is 2.40. That is still neutral but closing in on bullish, and the ratio has been strong enough of late to engender nine consecutive weeks of improvement in the broader Nasdaq Eight-Week Sell/Buy Ratio. That reading has improved to 3.28 (neutral) from 5.20 back on March 10. All of the above has Vickers' Total (all exchanges) One-Week Sell/Buy Ratio at a bullish 1.76 and the Total Eight-Week Sell/Buy Ratio close to bullish at 2.63 after nine weeks of improvement. On a sector basis, insider buying exceeded selling in Financials last week, with shares valued at $4.5 million bought versus $3.9 million sold. Buying also outpaced selling in Energy, although volume was light with less than $100,000 shares bought during the period. Selling was the greatest in Consumer Discretionary over the last week, with shares valued at $21 million sold versus just $2 million bought. Selling was also notable in Industrials, Consumer Staples, and Healthcare. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at HEICO Corp. (NYSE: HEI) and Elevance Health Inc. (NYSE: ELV).

The major indices closed with nice gains on Wednesday, but well off the highs achieved earlier in the session. The S&P 500 (SPX) gained 1.4%, the S&P 100 tacked on 1.7%, the Nasdaq rose 2.3%, and the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) added 2.1%. So it shouldn't be hard to tell what sector led. Yes, it was Information Technology (XLK), with a 3% jump and broad industry participation. Consumer Discretionary was second, rising 2.4% due to a 5.5% gain is TSLA, while Communication Services added 1.7% on gains in GOOGL and META. Chart provider StockCharts has a proprietary system known as SCTR, or the StockCharts Technical Rank. It is a relative strength metric that rates a stock's technical strength against its peers. Stocks are assigned a score based on six key indicators covering different timeframes. Within the S&P 500, the strongest 10% are ranked from 90 to 99.99, while the weakest 10% are scored from 0 to 9.99. These rankings tell a story that should be obvious to anyone that follows the market closely. The three highest-ranked sectors are Consumer Staples (88), Utilities (79), and Financials (72). That's certainly not the type of leadership one would prefer and is reminiscent of defensive posturing during an ongoing correction/bear market. The weakest are Information Technology (7), Materials (12), and Energy (13). Drilling down, the weakest IT industries are renewable energy (6) and semis (12). While not impossible, it will be tough for strong returns from the majors unless Information Technology gets off the mat. (Mark Arbeter, CMT)