Takeaway: It's been an ugly year for the perma-bulls, even with today's mercy rebound in equities.

Looking beyond terrible year-to-date performance, small caps are down significantly from their 2015 summer highs.

INSTANT INSIGHT | An Ugly Picture: Tallying Up The Performance Of Global Equities - rut chart

"The Russell 2000 took a peak at crash mode intraday yesterday (down more than 20% from its July 2015 bubble high) and is currently down -19.6% from that 1295 closing price yesterday," Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough wrote this morning in a note to subscribers. "This is not China – this is a U.S. domestic liquidity trap strangled by USA #Slowing."

INSTANT INSIGHT | An Ugly Picture: Tallying Up The Performance Of Global Equities - russell 2000

On a related note, the Russell's big-cap brethren, the S&P 500, hasn't fared much better. With the exception of Utilities (XLU), which just so happens to be our lone Long call in U.S. equities right now, everything else is getting absolutely crushed this year (i.e. Energy, Materials, and Financials).  

For global equities, the year-to-date scorecard (as of yesterday's close) isn't looking good either. Lots of red...

INSTANT INSIGHT | An Ugly Picture: Tallying Up The Performance Of Global Equities - global equities

... And here are a few highlights of the global equity draw-downs from their 2015 highs:

  1. Spain’s stock market (IBEX) is in crash mode -24.2% from its April 2015 peak
  2. Germany’s stock market (DAX) is toying with crash mode -19.1% from its April 2015 peak
  3. Japan’s stock market (Nikkei) dropped another -2.7% overnight and is -17.4% from its July 2015 peak 

So before you blindly "buy the dip." Do yourself a favor. Don't believe Old Wall storytelling and take a second to review the hard facts.