Today I want to talk about how important it is to know what's inside the index funds you own. In many cases they can be misleading. Something like the Dollar Index, for example, which is basically 60% Euro, is not exactly the best barometer of the "U.S. Dollar". The Consumer Discretionary Index is 23% Amazon. Stocks like Google and Facebook aren't even in the Technology Index! Combined, $GOOG & $FB actually make up around 40% of the Communications Index.

It's important to know what you own, or what you're analyzing for that matter. When you talk about the S&P500, this is basically they greatest momentum strategy of all time. It buys more of the biggest and best performing stocks and kicks out the worst ones, replacing them with better performers. For me, this is the best large-cap momentum strategy ever created. 

As June gets under way, it’s time to review positions with June options that remain open (haven’t already hit profit targets or been stopped out).

Most trades I put on for All Star Options tend to have a minimum duration of 30 days (short premium plays) and often as long as 6-8 months (for long premium plays). As options approach expiration, greeks like theta and gamma start to become my enemy and whipsaw my P/L. Therefore, as options and spreads get into the expiration month, my best practice is to put each position on notice — it’s time to take action.

Over the past few days, we've had traders and investors from all over the world go through our new Charting School. In case you missed it, I partnered up with a group of Emmy-award winning producers to put together what I think is the best course on Technical Analysis ever created!

I can say that with a straight face because these 6 hours of content are filled with lessons that I've had to learn the hard way over the past 2 decades, plus all of the knowledge I've picked up from the best Technical Analysts in the world, either in real life over the years or on my podcast that now has over 100 interviews.

We've had a lot of feedback so far from people taking the course. The one common denominator between all of them is, "It's Practical".

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 29, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This was a special week as Friday marked the end of May which means fresh monthly candlestick data. Analyzing these long-term monthly charts every several weeks is a great exercise as it forces us to take a step back and identify the structural trends that are in place.

As such, this week’s theme is the continued outperformance over both the short and long-term from those areas sporting the strongest primary uptrends.

Tech $XLK is by far the best performing sector over the trailing year. It is also the 2nd best over the past month and quarter, behind Communications $XLC and Health Care $XLV, respectively. Not surprisingly, these same sectors are also the next best performers over the trailing year.

Friday was a great day in my life. Not only did we get new Weekly Charts, as we normally do on Fridays, but we also got a fresh batch of Monthly Charts to analyze as well. These are all great developments for a team like ours, so driven by data. It's like a little mini-Christmas of data, for us to dive in to.

"Whenever in doubt, Zoom out", is how I learned it. The beauty of Monthly Charts is that it makes it impossible to ignore the primary trends. And that's what this is all about.

I like taking notes when I'm doing my chart reviews, Monthly's or otherwise. Here are a few things that stood out:

First of all, the Nasdaq Composite went out at new all-time highs, US 10yr Treasury Bond Futures went out at new all-time highs, and Gold & Silver went out at new multi-year highs.

My question here is, Who's NOT making money in this environment?

Also on the new all-time monthly closing high list:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We write a lot about focusing on the secular leaders in each sector and industry. Whether it's online retail, medical devices, or more niche areas like data-centers or mobile payments, they tend to share a common thread of innovation and technology.

Biotech fits this theme and has become an emerging leader, making new all-time highs for the first time in almost five years. It's been one of the top-performing subsectors off the lows and one of the first to reclaim its year-to-date highs.

In this post, we're going to drill into the space and highlight one of its strongest areas... Genomics.

This is a special weekend. The close on Friday marks the end of the day, week and month. That means we have a fresh batch of weekly AND monthly charts waiting for us. This process provides a lot of information because, by stepping back, it forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend.

In the meantime, a few shorter-term charts caught my attention. Both have been horrendous laggards in this market: Regional Banks and Industrials. My question here is whether or not we're seeing a changing of the guard?

Here are Regional Banks relative to the S&P500 putting in what appears like a fairly clean double bottom. Momentum putting in a bullish divergence is a nice touch:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Sentiment has not been good for Chinese Equities with a handful of recent sanctions adding to the general uncertainty around China-US relations. For the most part, we're seeing this reflected in price as the Shanghai Composite and iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) are trading at multi-month lows relative to the S&P 500.

Interestingly enough, the area being hit hardest with negative headlines is one of the few bright spots in China's market right now... Technology and Internet stocks.

In this post, we take a look at the improving relative strength from this group and offer trade ideas in some of its leading stocks.

Here is the ratio chart of the Kraneweb Chinese Internet ETF (KWEB) vs the S&P 500 (SPY) which we've been writing about since November.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Big news!

Charting School is officially here! This is everything I've learned over the past 2 decades from both my own experiences and from the best Technicians in the business!

I've prepared 7 Technical Analysis lessons that I believe will help you for the rest of your career, whether you're an individual trader, Financial Advisor, Portfolio Manager, or you work for a family office, trust or any other institution. If you're just getting started as a trader or you're a 30-yr market veteran, I'm confident you'll find these 6 hours to be incredibly valuable.

If you have to put money to work in the market, this course is for you. Period.

The price is regularly $495, but for this special launch, we're knocking off $100 and giving you lifetime access for just $395!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 22, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This week’s main theme is risk-on action from beaten-down areas which we'll highlight in our US Index and Factor ETF tables, below.

We're putting a lot of emphasis on risk-appetite measures right now in order to provide insight into how the recent rangebound activity in Equity and Bond markets is likely to resolve itself.

The most basic way to assess risk-tolerance is to compare the performance of risk-on vs risk-off assets. As such, this post will focus on how the offensive vs defensive areas of various markets are acting right now.

Click table to enlarge view.

Why does Technical Analysis work? Because markets trend. No one can argue that. I don't care who you are. And what do we do as technicians? We look for trends!

I was recently a guest on the Trends With Benefits show. It's the perfect name for a podcast about the stock market, especially when you invite someone like myself, who is constantly looking to benefit from underlying trends in the market.