There is a lot to be said for taking the time to analyze all of the stocks in an index. I find that process to be much more rewarding than obsessing over every 50 basis point move in the index itself. I've written in the past about how I think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is underrated. You can go through all 500 stocks in the S&P500 or just 30 of them in the DJIA and you'll get a quick snapshot of the health of the market. If there are more good ones than bad ones, it's probably not a downtrend in the index. If there are more bad stocks than good ones, it's likely the index will follow them lower as well.
Today I want to go through this process, but with the Dow Jones Transportation Average. You can go through them all yourself here. I did a deep dive analysis on Transportation Stocks in general when they were near their lows in August. The Dow Jones...
James Bianco is someone who has definitely influenced my work throughout my career. If you've ever watched one of my presentations, you know I could rip through 150 charts in an hour without a problem. I'm pretty sure I got in this habit watching James Bianco. Also, his multiple timeframe approach to Interest Rates and Intermarket Analysis is something I have a lot of respect for. In this conversation we discuss Bitcoin, of course, Rates, Sentiment, old market indicators that are no longer useful and what the spread between Copper and Gold could be signaling for the market moving forward. This was a real treat for me to have someone I've looked up to for a long time and pick his brain about his process. I hope you...
Sector rotation is the lifeblood of every bull market. When one sector reaches a temporary peak, another one takes over the charge while the former leaders consolidate. We have seen this happen throughout the past 2 years in a very consistent way. Today we're taking a look at all of the individual sectors and the industry groups within them to find the areas of strength and weakness moving forward.
The best hour I spend each month is going over my Monthly Candlestick Charts. I can't understand how some people don't do it. Think about it: 12 hours of your life per year. Imagine all the things you do throughout the year that takes you 12 hours and probably does you more harm than good.
If you forget everything I ever tell you, please just remember not to ignore the monthly candlesticks. It doesn't matter if you're a short-term trader or longer-term investor or anything in between. Getting longer-term perspective and identifying the direction of the primary trend is the most important thing we do. Once that has been determined, then we can incorporate multiple timeframes to break it down to our time horizon of choice, whether it's more intermediate or short-term.
Since November is now in the books, it's that time of the month to rip through a ton of Monthly Candlestick charts. Here's what I'm seeing out there:
I get asked a lot about moving averages. Many people think they are this incredible indicator that will lead to riches. Unfortunately, they're the furthest thing from that. These are just invisible lines that people like to paint different colors to exaggerate their meaning. There are all different kinds of moving averages: some are shorter-term, some are longer-term, some give more weight to recent prices while others are equally weighted. I like to say that if you have enough moving averages on your screen, one of them will work!
Today I'd like to share with you in simple terms how I use them:
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I look at a lot of charts. The best way to visualize the changes in equilibrium between supply and demand just so happens to be in chart form. If there was a better way to do it I would use that instead. So I'm stuck ripping through thousands and thousands of charts a week. I'm cool with it. It's something I enjoy doing because I know that the only way to properly weigh all of the evidence is to actually weigh it all.
One of the most valuable things I do is to go through every single U.S. Market Index. It really helps get perspective from all sorts of different angles, whether it is various market caps or weighting combinations. I've learned that it's not just about the S&P500 or Nasdaq100 or Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's how they are all getting along with one another that I'm most concerned with.
We'll go one by one discussing risk levels, targets and implications:
This week on the podcast we have Charlie Bilello, Chartered Market Technician and Director of Research at Pension Partners, LLC. Charlie is someone many of us consider to be a deep thinker. The former Charles Dow Award winner is well known for busting stock market myths made popular by members of the media and other types of people who do not even participate in markets. In this episode we discuss why news consumption tends to do more harm than good, what some of the alternatives are and why it is a good idea to follow market behavior, instead of people's opinions. We get into the current market environment and discuss the current sentiment and price action in Gold, Bitcoin and US Equities. Charlie is one of the ones I knew I wanted to have on this podcast...
It was Thanksgiving last week and the hot topic all over dinner tables throughout the world was about Bitcoin. Older relatives asking younger nieces and nephews to explain crypto-currencies was probably something pretty hilarious to watch by being a fly on the wall of many households.
In the spirit of the holidays, I thought I would post a couple of charts that I think are worth sharing with those family members and friends who are coming out of the woodwork asking about the not so new asset class. While I don't particularly care about the actual technology behind blockchain, I do think it's important to focus on the behavior of these markets. This is how we can responsibly calculate risk vs reward propositions. That's what this is about at the end of the day right? We're here to make money.
Chris Kimble is one of those Technical Analysts that I started following a long time ago. He incorporates an intermarket approach and consistently uses multiple timeframes. Those are things that definitely get my attention. In this podcast, Chris shares with us some of his experiences with his mentor Sir John Templeton. While we talk about a lot of the lessons that we've learned over the years, this conversation dives into the short-term and longer-term outlook for Gold, the US Dollar, Crude Oil and Interest Rates. Sentiment is something that Chris and I both focus on so I think this conversation is well rounded in terms of having both an educational focus and actionable ideas for the current market environment.
One thing that often gets forgotten is that we don't live in a vacuum. Life in the market is not just about absolute performance, but about how assets behave relative to their peers. The stock market isn't the biggest game in town, it's the bond market. But let's not forget about metals either. When stocks are in bull markets, they're not just going up as a group, they are also outperforming the alternatives.
Today we're taking a look at stocks, not just on their own, but relative to the other assets. We know that on their own stocks are making new all-time highs. This is happening all over the world. Stocks in the U.S. aren't up because of what's happening in New York or Washington DC. Stocks in the U.S. are up because stocks all over the world are going up, both in developed and emerging markets, despite of what is happening in New York and Washington DC.
Some people have this misconception that stocks are in the later innings of this uptrend. I've been arguing, almost religiously, that they are probably much closer to the beginning of the bull market than near the end. So no, this is not the 9th year of a bull market, I think we're probably early in...
As I continue to go through all of the stocks in my chartbook, I thought it would be good to post some of the more interesting ones. I've tried my best to identify only the stocks showing both relative strength and momentum, but that also present a favorable risk vs reward opportunity. This helps makes this portion of the analysis more actionable. You can see the more global macro context here, and you can see my list of Technology stocks I like here.
In this post, we are focusing only on the Healthcare Sector and the specific industries within it.
We're here to make money in the market aren't we? Some people want to gossip about tax cuts or who the next fed chair might be. I personally see no absolutely value in this sort of data. In fact, I believe it does more harm than good.
We want to turn the TV off, shut down the twitters and social medias and focus on the only thing that matters: price. The first thing we do is identify what the current market environment looks like. In this process we include stock market indexes in both the U.S. and all over the world, Commodities, Interest Rates and Currencies. Once we have laid out exactly what sort of environment we're in, then we can dig down to the individual sector level and ultimately to stock specific ideas. But all of this must be done after we've identified what sort of environment we're currently in.
Click here to see what the current environment is like today:
This is what I'm seeing out of Technology stocks specifically. While there are a few stocks with shorting potential, and some other stocks not...
The noise machines are getting louder these days with Junk Bond Funds falling to levels not seen since March. You have the frustrated stock market bears data mining the heck out of everything trying to find something to justify their losing positions, or lack of winning ones in many cases. Remember it's not just about the money they've lost trying to short the stock market, it's the overwhelming amount of opportunity cost already incurred by simply not being long enough. It's double the frustration. I've noticed these bears turning to the bond market for guidance.
While the yield curve continues to fall, we've actually found that historically the stock market does the best when the yield curve is exactly where it is today (2s-10s specifically). But today I want to talk about the spreads between Junk Bonds and Government Bonds. When the stock market is showing plenty of evidence of risk appetite, we want to see the bond market confirming that as well, not diverging from it.
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As you guys know I've been pounding the table bullish of stocks for a long time. Not just U.S. stocks, but globally including both developed and emerging markets. This aggressively long approach is nothing new to us. Along the way, however, I've tried to point out some of the things we've been watching closely as a warning that a bullish thesis is most likely wrong. Again, it's not so much about how high we think a stock or sector or index can go, but at what point are we wrong? What's the risk? is the more most important question.
What many investors fail to understand is that we're not here to be right, we're only here to make money. There's a difference. We want to determine where we are wrong prior to even entering into a new investment. In other words, there needs to be somewhere between the price where we buy something and zero where we admit that our thesis was incorrect. To take this process even further, we want to imagine what the overall market environment would look like in the off chance that we are not correct. I say that kind of tongue-in-cheek because as many of you guys already know, I assume that I am wrong every single time and focus...
A wise Egyptian man once taught me, "If you trade the averages, you'll get average returns". The media likes to focus on what "The market" is doing today?". People want to know, "What did the market do today?". It's just how we are and how we think. But it's not the best approach, in my opinion. Far from it.
This is not a stock market, it is a market of stocks. There's a difference. It's funny how many people have tried shorting the major US averages over the past couple of years only to see sectors rotating and a majority of the components holding them up. While some sectors go through corrections, another one steps up and leads the averages higher. Sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market. This one has been no different.
Today I want to turn your attention to a group of stocks that I like to include in the Chartbook. These are a group of some of the most important names that do not fall within the category of the Dow Jones Industrial Average or Dow Jones Transportation Average. We're in the process of doing some updates on the site and will be adding several new workbooks...
Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.
We've been bullish towards US and Global Stocks as they remain in strong uptrends on any sort of intermediate-term time horizon. I still think this is an environment where we need to be buying weakness in stocks, not selling strength. The weight of the evidence is still pointing to an increased amount of risk appetite, not risk aversion. We will go over a multi-timeframe approach on this conference call where we will start with the longer-term and then work our way down to more short-term to intermediate-term investing ideas. This will also include other assets like the US Dollar, Euro, Gold, Silver, Crude Oil and Interest Rates.
I'll do my best to lay out my weight of the evidence conclusions and walk you step by step with how I got there!...
Since September we've been in the camp that the US Dollar is heading higher and potentially a lot higher. So if you want to be long the US Dollar, that is one way to take advantage of it. Short Euro has been another. But my favorite has been to be short the Gold Miners, particularly the more vulnerable Junior Gold Miners $GDXJ. So far this is working well. But I think it's worth reiterating that we, in general, want to approach the marketplace within the context of what we think will be a rising US Dollar environment.
Today we're taking a closer look at what's going on here:
They say not to kick someone when they're down. But in the market it's the opposite. When they are down is exactly when you want to kick them. This is especially the case when they are down while other things are up. We don't want to be shorting the strongest stocks. We want to be shorting the underperformers where the holders are losers, they're wrong, stuck and need to get out, but can't. We are here, not only to make money on the upside of things, but also to benefit from the losses of others. When this pain starts to really set in, that's when we want to kick them, when they're down!
In this case I have 3 examples of people who are down. This is in the face of stocks ripping:
It is such an incredible blessing to have monthly candlestick charts of all the markets around the world at our disposal. It's essentially free data which is easily organized into a visual format to help us identify the direction of the underlying trends. It doesn't matter what your time horizon is, the monthly candlesticks offer a longer-term perspective from which to begin your analysis. From there is when you work your way down to more intermediate and shorter-term time horizons, but keeping the direction of the underlying primary trends in context.
I have a massive workbook of Monthly Candlestick charts that I review at the end of every month. I do not even open this workbook in the middle of the month. The fact that I only look at this workbook 12 times a year forces me to always come back to the primary trend, not allowing me to forget it. This exercise really helps me stay true and keeps me honest. It is easily one of the most valuable parts of my entire process.
These are some of the things that stood out to me the most:
Gail Dudack brings a unique perspective to markets, particularly compared to other guests we've had on Technical Analysis Radio. Gail's career goes back to the 1970s. She has served the Chief US Investment Strategist at UBS and Pershing prior to that. She was a rotating panelist on ‘Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser’ for over 20 years. As a past President of the CMT Association, I think her experience and approach to markets is one we can all learn from. In this episode Gail talks about how she incorporates the news cycle into her sentiment work along with other more quantitative inputs. Early in her career...
It's a busy time of the year for me. I've been given the opportunity to join a panel of amazing analysts at the 2nd annual Evidence-Based Investing Conference put on by my friends at Ritholtz Wealth Management. I will also be giving an hour long presentation at the Chicago Board of Trade on Technical Analysis and the Intermarket Relationships that I incorporate when making decisions about the current market environment. In a few weeks I will be presenting in San Leandro, CA at the Deaf Community Center and we'll have a sign language interpreter there to help us. This will be a lot of fun!
Here are all of the details. I hope you can join me for one or all of these!