In recent days, fewer than 150 stocks across the three U.S. exchanges have hit new highs. That’s very few, yet some are very interesting — and indicative of a new trend.

Coffee seems to be a big deal right now, possibly because prices of the commodity are coming down. Peet’s Coffee (NASDAQ:PEET), which admittedly makes a mean latte for a chain, rose by 3.5% in the past week, .while Minneapolis-based chain Caribou Coffee (NASDAQ:CBOU) rose 7%.

Also hitting a new high in the past week setting an eight-month base was Ruth’s Hospitality (NASDAQ:RUTH), which runs the Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain (maybe they do an especially nice job with after-dinner espressos). Also trading well has been hamburger king McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) and toothpaste giant Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL).

I’m getting a food theme here, which makes sense, considering that even when an economy does a face-plant people need to keep eating, brushing their teeth and drinking coffee. One thing we can say for sure is that if these stocks start to go the way of the techs and metals, then we really know the market is in the soup.

Speaking of which, let’s turn our attention to the New Lows list. This is where a lot of troublesome signaling lies because there are a ton of former leaders on this list. It’s not just Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), which has sunk below its bear market lows now.

And it’s not just funky recent Chinese IPOs that I have been high-lighting as short candidates in my Traders’ Advantage letter, such as Qihou 360 (NASDAQ:QIHU), Renren (NYSE:RENN), or E-Commerce China Dangdang (NASDAQ:DANG) — all of which trade more than a million shares a day and are being annihilated, as well they should be.

For our purposes, I’m talking more about semiconductor and storage stalwarts such as Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL), Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and wafer giant MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE:WFR), as well as light-emitting diode leader Cree (NASDAQ:CREE).

Thes charts of these stocks don’t just look bad, they look bad with a bullet through the heart. Understand that Cree, shown is a $4 billion maker of LED chips that are supposed to turn the electricity-wasting ways lighting the U.S. and Europe on their head. Its chips are also used in video screens, gaming displays, and automobiles. Investors have absolutely abandoned this stock just as they have many other chip makers due to expectations that growth is slowing not just a little, but a lot.

In large part, that is the message we are supposed to hear from the Weekly Leading Index of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. The growth rate of the WLI slowed to 3.7% from 4.1% in the prior period, and the monthly growth rate of the WLI was logged at 4.4% in May, down from 5.8% in the prior period.

The WLI helps us look around the corner of U.S. economic growth — it’s not a model that extrapolates from the recent past into the near future. It is forecasting that growth on the six-month horizon is slowing.

I have come to trust the ECRI and Lakshman Achuthan more than any other economic forecaster because the record of the model is unmatched. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Achuthan said the data shows that the U.S. economy is “not yet” headed for another recession, but a “sharp and prolonged” downturn is underway that may make jobs growth even tougher to come by in coming months.

”We’re talking about a cyclical turn that’s pronounced pervasive and persistent, not a one or two month affair,” Achuthan said. He added that the slowdown is likely to last a couple of quarters at least. “This isn’t a story about one country driving growth down: China didn’t do this, and the U.S. didn’t do this,” he told the WSJ. ”It’s very big, and not something you can deny.”

He argued that this means this summer could bear a striking resemblance to last, when a jerky economy prompted the Federal Reserve to start its second quantitative easing program. That program will end this month, just as the economy appears to be losing momentum.

”The broad economy is going to slow alongside the industrial sector starting in the middle of this year, so in that sense it may feel like last year,” Achuthan said. ”It’s all going to be synchronized.”

Achuthan told the Journal that even before Japan’s wrenching nuclear disaster and turmoil in the Middle East created tumult in the global economy, ECRI’s longer-term leading indicators had already begun to soften.

In a development that is likely to be worrisome for job seekers, the 9.1% unemployment rate that has defied the Fed’s monetary stimulus efforts may be around for longer than some anticipate, according to the WSJ report. ECRI sees jobs growth as ”slower” in the months to come, Achuthan said.

“You’re not going to see the quarter of a million jobs created on average anytime soon,” he said. ”We’re going to get back into that 100 plus or minus range through the summer.”

Bottom line: A few groups of defensive stocks focused on basic consumer needs like coffee and shampoo are still attracting investors. But the rest of the market is selling off in an effort to discount further economic slowdown that lies over the horizon. The decline will overshoot the expected size of the economic decline, potentially by a lot, so this is no time to be a hero on the long side of the market.