JC Parets, who holds a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation, is the founder of All Star Charts and is one of the most widely followed Technical Analysts in the world. All Star Charts is a research platform for both professional and retail investors covering US and International stocks, interest rates, commodities and forex markets.
JC’s work has been featured regularly on Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox Business, ABC, CNN, Wall Street Journal and many other financial media outlets around the world. You will often see JC as a speaker at some of the top investing conferences; he has also been invited to speak at Harvard, Duke, NYU, University of Chicago and Hong Kong Baptist University, among other institutions, about Technical Analysis and Behavioral Finance. JC specializes in finding the most opportunistic risk vs reward propositions while at the same time bringing a top/down approach to the marketplace whose wide spectrum is rivaled by few.
In 2017, JC launched Technical Analysis Radio, a podcast dedicated to Technical Analysis and the Technicians who practice it.
When he is not looking at charts, JC enjoys playing and watching sports, good food and good wine. He splits time between New York City, Miami and Sonoma Valley but also does his best to travel the world speaking to investors from different cultures always striving to become a wiser investor.
This year's Santa Claus Rally Period starts on Tuesday.
To clear up any confusion, the official period for the annual Santa Claus Rally includes the last 5 trading days of the year and the first 2 of the following year, for a total of 7 days.
Since 1950, the S&P500 has averaged a 1.3% gain during this period. And if you want to take it back further, since 1928 we've seen an average gain of 1.6%. This compares to just a 0.2% gain for any other random 7 day period throughout the rest of the year.
Every year is slightly different, depending on which days Christmas and New Years fall on the Calendar.
The last 5 days of 2024 begin this Tuesday December 24th. And the first 2 days of next year include January 2nd and 3rd. So the official 7 day period this year goes from December 24th - January 3rd.
And while traditionally, this is a much more bullish time of the year, compared to other periods, the bigger concern is if Santa doesn't show up.
Did you see how many stocks made new lows this week?
It wasn't many.
When you look at how dramatic people have been about a few stocks selling off a little bit, you would think that an actual correction might be taking place in the market.
But if you thought that humans act logically, then you clearly don't know humans.
Irrational behavior is actually the only thing that the market guarantees. And you saw it again this week.
I mean, you didn't even get an expansion of stocks making new lows!
This was nothing.
All you have to do is go and count. You'll quickly see how the new 52-week lows list is almost non-existent. In fact, you saw fewer new 52-week lows on the NYSE this week than you did in early August.
But if you look even shorter-term, say new 3-month lows, you didn't seen any sort of expansion there either.
Look at the total new 3-month lows among Large-caps, Mid-caps and Small-caps.
I'm back from a few days away and boy do we have a lot to discuss.
I hope you enjoyed the guest posts over the past week from some of the key members of our team.
It's good that you get to know some of the other guys so you don't think I'm just some crazy guy who looks at a million charts. There's a lot more to it than that, and hopefully that came across this week.
But first thing's first. This is a bull market for stocks and people seem to be running scared. They're freaking out.
