The Fixed Income, Commodity, and Currency markets are near and dear to my heart. Ever since I began learning Technical Analysis, I've always loved analyzing things that are "off the beaten path." This included everything from Interest Rates to Soybeans to the Norwegian Krone. Equities are great and all, but this is the stuff that gets me up in the morning.
In addition to the blog posts we do on the site, I've wanted to explore new ways to share that passion with you all and show why even if you're not investing in these markets directly, they're worth paying attention to.
That brings us to my new weekly show, "What The FICC?"
In this weekly video series, I'll be highlighting the most important chart or theme from these three asset classes while doing my best to tie that analysis back to Equities through an intermarket signal or a trade idea.
The first two pilot episodes are linked down below. I hope you enjoy them and look forward to seeing you all back here each week for a new episode!
There has been a lot of opportunity in Commodities lately, particularly in Precious Metals and Base Metals, after years of nothing.
Today we want to highlight the strength in Natural Gas, a theme we've been pointing to most of this year but that's now accelerating.
Let's take a look at what's happening and how we can take advantage of it.
Here's the chart we were using as our roadmap at the beginning of the year as prices approached long-term support near 115. Additionally, we were seeing momentum stay out of oversold territory, signaling that sellers were unable to stay aggressive and take prices to new lows.
We've been selectively participating in a few Steel stocks over the last few months as we waited for a signal to get more aggressive in the space.
Yesterday we got that signal as the Nifty Metal Index broke out to new recovery highs and reclaimed support on a relative basis.
In this post, we're going to outline what we're seeing in the sector and what we're buying to take advantage of this theme.
First, let's start with Base Metals (read for context), which continue to trend higher along with Precious Metals. In July when we were talking about them, we were staying very selective in the Nifty Metal space because it hadn't yet broken out despite the strength in Commodities.
This is a behind the scenes video of our team meeting held on July 6, 2020 4PM ET.
Every quarter we put out our Playbook focusing on the most important themes around the world to take advantage of, and just as importantly, which areas to avoid. This is usually about 150 pages and really dives deep into stocks, rates, commodities, forex and the intermarket relationships between all of them.
I hope this gives you some perspective on how we approach markets using our Top/Down Approach. We've always found it helpful to understand where people are coming from and why they say certain things. I hope this can give you some of that context about us. I think it also helps you get to know our team a little better. Enjoy!
Welcome to my new Monthly show that I'm doing with my friend Josh Brown. He is one of the most widely followed Financial Advisors in the country, and someone who I've been arguing with about markets for the better part of 2 decades.
Every month I'll bring a handful of the the most important Monthly charts that stood out during my review. In our first episode, I wanted to discuss the S&P500 making new all-time highs, Transports leading the way in July, Rates hitting new all-time lows and Bitcoin starting a new breakout.
This is the chart that I think tells the July story best. The further to the left the asset is, the closer it is to a new a 52 week high. The higher up the asset, the better its performance in July. Notice Transports in the upper right: Relative weakness overall, BUT the best performer this month, followed by Emerging Markets, Gold and base metals. The lonely US Dollar down below stands out doesn't it?
This weekend we got a fresh batch of new Monthly Candlesticks. If you're not using these charts to help you identify primary trends, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. I rarely push a particular strategy or process. I usually just like to present the data, give you my conclusions, and then let you decide how, or if, you want to use it.
But for this, I don't care who you are, Monthly Charts are an invaluable tool. Even if you're a short-term trader or swing trader, we want to put all of that work into context, recognizing the major trends that are in place. Trust me, go build your own list of the most important charts and flip through them just once at the end of each month. I challenge you to start doing that every month and then come and tell me that it's not helpful. I dare you!
This week on the show I ask Howard about what Trading is going to be like in the Future. What are the hours like? How will we execute orders and on what kind of exchanges? This was really fun and something I rarely get to chat about in Public. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Every week we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories, along with commentary on each.
Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and give our outlook, as well as some of the things we're watching for in the month ahead.
With July just coming to a close, we're going to focus on that month's returns for insight into the near-term and analyze a variety of monthly charts in order to view the recent performance within the context of the underlying trends.
This week, we'll highlight the broad-based bullish performance across just about every asset class in July, as well as one of the tailwinds for this which was the weak US Dollar.
Here is our list of International Indexes. We continue to see outperformance from the US, China, and other areas of Asia such as Taiwan (which is not shown in the table, but made new all-time highs this month). The Shanghai Composite and Wilshire 5000 are outperforming their peers with significant gains over every timeframe.
Yesterday we discussed some of the potential headwinds for Crude Oil, Copper, and other risk assets.
After doing my International Chartbook review over the weekend, I wanted to share some of the things we're seeing and what it means for Equities as an asset class.
After doing my International Chartbook review over the weekend, I wanted to share some of the things we're seeing and what it means for Equities as an asset class.