Consolidations tend to resolve in the direction of the underlying trend. But when they don't, that's the signal!

An oldie but goodie from the past, that I always think about when this comes up, is the US Treasury Bond Fund back in the Fall of 2016. I remember chatting with Liz Claman at the time about it on FOX. The $TLT was consolidating in a classic, textbook continuation pattern above former resistance from the early 2015 highs:

The bet we were making (for many other factors as well at that time) was that this was not a continuation pattern, and instead a massive failed breakout.

Looking at Monthly Charts only takes about an hour per month and is one of the most valuable exercises in our process. By focusing on the long-term, we can filter out the noise and identify what's really happening with a stock, index, etc.

In this post, we wanted to share a few charts that stood out to in May.

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. 

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:

Earlier this month we outlined the "Five Bull Market Barometers" we're watching to identify the beginning of a new bull market in stocks.

In this post, we'll update those charts without going into as much detail as to why they're important. So if you haven't read our initial post linked above, we'd encourage you to check it out.

With that said, let's jump in and see how these charts have developed since.

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.

The market remains a hot mess where we're preferring market-neutral trades, however, some absolute trades are appropriate when the reward/risk is skewed heavily in our favor.

We outlined some favorable longs and shorts earlier today.

Another way of skewing the reward/risk in our favor is by looking for "big bases."

The way we learned it is the bigger the base, the higher in space and this is certainly a big base. And the reason we like looking for base breakouts in this environment is two-fold.

First off, big bases take time to form because they are caused by steady institutional accumulation. Mom and pop investors aren’t the ones creating this type of pattern, so we know that there’s underlying demand that will support prices if they do move lower.

We remain in an environment where there are stocks going up, stocks going down, and many stocks doing a whole lot of nothing.

We're being very selective before putting money to work and just reiterated a few short setups in the Financial Services Sector.

In this post, we're focused on stocks exhibiting specific conditions that create a reward/risk opportunity that is ridiculously skewed in our favor.

In late April we highlighted the relative weakness in the Nifty Financial Services Index and highlighted several individual stocks that stood out as leaders and laggards.

One of our six charts to watch this week is the Nifty Bank Index, so today we want to look at two stocks showing symptoms of the underlying problem in the sector.