US stock market narrowing as other markets crash

Ron Insana thinks that US stocks could be headed for a correction.

Let's face it: With, or without, government intervention, the Chinese market is crashing...

Commodities have crashed...

And while U.S. markets are not terribly far off their highs, and have traded in an extremely tight range this year, the technical deterioration in U.S. stocks has been, literally, "breadth-taking."

Market leadership has been provided by only a handful of stocks, while everything from high-flying biotech stocks, to oil and gold shares, are providing leadership on the downside...

Add to those concerns the likelihood of a rate hike from the Federal Reserve...and I would recommend taking profits and putting on some protective hedges against a long-only portfolio.

A report from MarketWatch also highlighted the narrowing breadth of the market.

The lion’s share of gains that have been racked up by the S&P 500 so far this year come mainly from two sectors: health-care and consumer discretionary stocks. In fact, five out of the index’s 10 main sectors are nursing year-to-date losses...

Indeed, the chart of the equal-weighted S&P 500 shows that average stocks are trending lower...