From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

If you read our research regularly you may be sick of this by now, so my apologies. But there is a method to our madness. A tried and true repeatable process that allows us to consistently identify the strongest and weakest areas of the market. Any market. While we've focused mainly on US Equities recently, we can apply these same principles to any asset class.

We have continually highlighted the fact that the long-term outperformers are often also the short-term leaders. Why? Because there is empirical evidence to support this and we know it works. I'll be writing an educational post about this soon.

We've also written a lot lately about how one of the main signals we're looking for before turning bullish on stocks is for the percent of NYSE components to break back above 15%. Well, we're still not really close, but with such drastic daily swings in the major indexes, this could change fast so we want to be ready if and when it does.

Earlier this week, I put out a note about what I've been telling friends and family when they come asking. It comes with the territory right? I'm sure many of you are being sought after in similar ways. It makes sense for this environment.

But the truth is, I underestimated just how much this post would resonate with people. So much so, that I figured I'd write a follow up about another popular, yet simple strategy that I learned a long time ago.

To recap, what the Family & Friends post was about, was the percentage of stocks on the NYSE above their 200 day moving average. Historically, it's when we're above 15% and rising that it makes the most sense to own stocks. When we're below that, it's further evidence that stocks are a mess.

The reason I like it is because it's a very infrequent signal, only helpful after severe corrections, and it's free for anyone to follow. What more can you ask for to give your loved ones an inside look...

Long-term Equity charts and breadth measures continue to suggest a defensive approach towards stocks remains appropriate.

With that said, if you're a trader taking advantage of this volatility then the following charts are those we'd watch to determine if the recent bounce can continue.

We're in that part of the cycle where friends from high school are calling me to ask about the market and family members I've never spoken to about the markets are now interested. It's funny what a little volatility can do to peak people's interests.

Anyway, these calls are coming early and often. Many of you in a similar position to me are probably having the same experience.

Today, I thought I'd just write a quick post about what I'm telling my loved ones when they ask.

First of all, I definitely stress that not having a plan is the first problem. This shouldn't be the time to try and figure out what to do. This is when stress levels are elevated and when we're most vulnerable to make irrational decisions. I try to remind them of this, but they don't care. They never do.

So moving on, the old, "JC, when do I buy stocks?" question keeps coming back. It's fair. Everyone wants to know.

We've been talking a lot about our expectations for continued volatility and what conditions we'd need to be bullish stocks again.

In this post, we want to step back and see what some of the longer-term weekly and monthly charts are suggesting for stocks and the other major asset classes.

Here's the Nifty 50 which spent the last two years grinding slightly higher as momentum diverged negatively. So far this year, prices have fallen 40% and retraced 38.2% of their entire 2001-2019 rally...in three months. From a risk management perspective, bulls need to see 8,000 hold in the Nifty 50 or there is further downside risk towards 6,200.

Click on chart to enlarge view. 

Small-Caps have been an absolute disaster, losing 2/3 of their value over the last 2 years. With prices stuck below the 61.8% retracement of their 2004-2018 rally...

Last week we outlined why the risk remains elevated in stocks and updated our forecast for continued volatility.

When markets go through periods of elevated volatility/stress, many market participants look to catch the exact bottom, but a better approach in our view is to buy on the way back up!

The trend for stocks is down. When they do rally, they scream dead-cat bounce. And bonds keep going out at new all-time highs every week. Gold is at its highest prices in 7 years and Interest rates are in free-fall along with bank stocks. What type of environment does this appear like to you? Is it the kind of market where we want to be buying stocks aggressively, or is this the type of market where we want to be smaller, cash heavy and more defensive?

Let's try to figure it out together.

First of all, Industrials historically have the highest correlation with the S&P500 of all the S&P Sectors. This is what that group currently looks like. One of our most basic technical principles is that former support turns into resistance. We call that Polarity. You can see this taking place in this...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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

As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.

This week we want to highlight our US Equity Index and Sector tables, as they are both showing continued evidence to support some of the trends we've discussed recently.

Click on table to enlarge view.

Last week, we wrote a post about the importance of the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) due to its long-term outperformance vs the rest of the US Equity Market. As seen in the table above this relative strength has continued over the trailing weeks and months as QQQ has outperformed the other US Indexes over every...

Did you see Consumer Staples go out at new multi-year relative highs yesterday? The strength is in Staples, not in Banks or Industrials, for example, which keep making new relative lows.

So why should we care?

"JC, no one cares about staples, why does this matter?"

Well, as it turns out, Consumer Staples relative strength is one of the most reliable indicators of market strength and weakness that exists. You see, when stocks are doing well, Consumer Staples tend to underperform the rest of the market. When stocks are doing poorly, Staples are the leaders.

Think about it. No matter how bad the economy gets, we're still going to brush our teeth, wash our dishes, smoke cigarettes and drink beer right? As a society, I mean. Well, those are consumer staples. This is the group of stocks that outperforms as stocks fall, which makes perfect sense.

Here is the chart of Staples breaking out to new multi-year highs relative to S&Ps:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As always, thanks to everyone for participating in this week's Mystery Chart. Almost all respondents were buyers. A few also mentioned they would only want to be long against potential support at the prior lows which is likely the same approach we'd be taking with a long-term timeframe.

Something we've hit on a lot lately which was also a common theme among the Technicians that presented at Chart Summit 2020 last weekend, is that the relative trends that have been in place have more or less remained in place throughout the recent volatility. Check out this week's podcast episode where JC and I discuss this and other key themes from the conference.

Chart Summit 2020 is officially in the books. What an amazing time we had. Wow!

The videos of all the presentations are now up and you can go to ChartSummit.com and stream them for FREE!

As we always like to do here after Chart Summit, Steve Strazza and I sat down to discuss what we just witnessed. This was one of the most amazing list of speakers I've ever seen at a Financial Conference. I can't even believe we were able to pull this off! Plus, we raised over $50,000 in donations, on the first day alone, to help fight coronavirus. Thank you to everyone who attended and donated! Also, big shoutout to Traders4ACause for helping us choose the organizations we're donating to and collecting all the money. We could not have done this without you!

In this...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Last week we talked about some of the positives in the market...Copper holdings its low, Tech leadership, etc.

This week we're taking a look at why this rally is likely a dead cat bounce with some stats.

In this post, we're going to outline the inter-market signals we're watching for stocks next move...and why they suggest it's likely lower.