One of the most important parts of my process in selecting potential options trades is to assess the current volatility situation. Everything else being equal, I like to put on trades that position myself for volatility to revert to its mean. In other words, if volatility is high and therefore options prices are high, I want to express my directional trade in such a way that it might also benefit from volatility falling back to "normal" levels. Conversely, when volatility is low, I want any position I consider to benefit from a rise in volatility -- if there is one.
There are no free lunches on Wall Street, nor in options trading. But betting on volatility reverting to the mean might be one of the closest things to it. The trick is in the timing.
Of all the most liquid ETFs I track, the one that has been the quietest lately -- in terms of price action and volatility in options pricing -- is the Retail Sector ETF $XRT. In fact, volatility in $XRT is currently at the lowest levels last seen in 2018 before the Christmas selloff. This has given me a wild idea...
The market remains a “hot mess", so we’re looking under the surface at breadth and risk appetite measures to identify clues as to the potential direction that this 15-month range will resolve itself.
Today I want to look at one of those measures, Consumer Discretionary stocks vs Consumer Staples.
If you're a long-only fund manager that believes the market is headed higher, you're going to be in more aggressive areas of the market like Discretionary. If you believe the market is headed lower or isn't going to do much, you're going to be in the lower beta, often higher dividend Consumer Staple stocks.
So what's happening in these sectors right now?
The Equal-Weight Consumer Discretionary vs Equal-Weight Consumer Staples continues to struggle with a flat 200-day moving average and confluence of support/resistance, but just made new 6-month highs this week. While this chart still work to do to confirm an intermediate-term uptrend, this is extremely constructive action and is suggesting that risk appetite among market participants is beginning to pick up.
I've been talking markets with Liz Claman for the better part of the last decade. Whenever I'm in New York, I like to swing by the FOX studios to say hello. This week we discussed the relative strength in Semi's and how I think they will lead stocks and the S&P500 to new all-time highs.
Sean and I have known each other for over a decade but there are still things he's interested in learning about my experiences. In this video, Sean asks me how playing baseball made me a better trader or investor. The key takeaways here are:
1) Hard Work and Mental Toughness
2) Preparation and knowing what you will do under any circumstance
3) Learning how to lose. If you fail 70% of the time on the diamond, you get inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Being able to take a loss and move on is part of the path to success.
One of the topics I spoke about during my Chart Summit presentation on breadth last month was the relative performance of Equally-Weighted versus Cap-Weighted Indexes.
I always hear that the market cannot go higher on an absolute basis if the Equally-Weighted S&P 500 is underperforming the Cap-Weighted.
It's been about three weeks since I wrote this post looking at breadth across various Equity markets since January 2018.
JC wrote a post today about "The Cards We've Been Dealt" which references some of these stats, so I wanted to update some of them and highlight another way we use them to measure breadth.
We have to play the cards we're dealt. Like it or not, this is the environment we're forced to invest in, but only if you want to. You don't have to invest. Cash has been a viable option for 6 months. It's worked out great. Most stocks, sectors, US and International Indexes are still below their January 2018 highs. I can give you the exact numbers like we provide for our Institutional Customers, but just take my word for it. It's not even close. We've been in a 14-month sideways range, or downtrend, depending on who you ask. Either way, it's not an uptrend for most stocks.
Now, this 14-month nothing burger comes within the context of a major bull market in stocks, that arguably started in 2016. After a monster run throughout 2016 and 2017, the stock market, both U.S. and abroad, has consolidated those gains. It seems perfectly normal, and well deserved, if you ask me.
I received a ton of great responses via Twitter and email for this week's Mystery Chart, so thank you for that.
Most said you'd be buying the breakout at current levels or on a successful retest, but a few skeptics were staying away. Let's get into the actual chart.
Palladium. For the last 3 years, nobody cared a lick as it nearly quadrupled in price. Over the last month however, I'd seen more mentions* as the price trend accelerated than I did for the entire 3-year trend beforehand.
For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and eliminate the x and y-axes and and all labels eliminated to minimize bias. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. It can even be inverted or a custom index.
The point here is to not guess what it is, but instead to think about what you would do right now.Buy,Sell, or Do Nothing?
If the US Dollar is falling, International Equities trading via US listed ETFs should outperform US Stocks. When the US Dollar is rising, International Equities should underperform US Stocks.
Sounds like a logical relationship, but as usual, it's not that simple.
