In late December I highlighted a few things from a weekend of charting that suggested improving risk appetite in Equities, one of which was a potential bottom in Crude Oil. Today I'm seeing the opposite, so I want to look at the near-term risk Crude Oil poses along with a few other things.
One of the most valuable parts of my entire process is going through my workbook of Monthly Charts (only) at the end of each month. It's easy to get lost in the day-to-day noise, but this exercise forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend.
During my review, there are always a few of them that stand out. Today I want to point out what’s happening in Americas largest sector. This is a chart of the Technology Index Fund $XLK successfully retesting those March 2000 highs and trying to rip higher:
With a new month comes a fresh batch of Monthly Candlesticks. As you are all well aware, I find this exercise to be incredibly valuable. It forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend.
Today we got new Monthly Candlesticks and while updating the chartbook for our Premium Members, I couldn't help but think the chart below describes the environment we're currently in quite well.
Finding things to short on an absolute basis has been tough since December, however, Shipping stocks appear to be presenting an attractive reward/risk for those looking to express a bearish thesis in the market.
Chart Summit was a "Ski during the day and Chart at night" event held on February 22-23, 2019 in Breckenridge, CO. I co-hosted it with Brian Shannon and this is the video of my presentation:
The Top/Down Approach to Financial Markets using Technical Analysis
If there is any group out there that is feeling the frustration, it's the gold bug community. Gold is at the same price today that it was a year ago, 5 years ago and 8 years ago. During that time frame, the S&P500 has more than doubled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more that 14,000 points, again more than doubling during this period.
Even U.S. Treasury Bonds made money as interest rates collapsed. The bond ETF $TLT was up over 60% before retracing some of that over the past couple of years. But still, up substantially and clearly outperforming precious metals.
You could have literally been in anything other than these commodities and made money. But from epic frustration comes secular periods for profit. I think this is what we have here:
The noisemakers love to talk to you about something they like to call FANG, or FAANG or FAAMG. I think they change it each time, depending on which narrative their trying to pass along to the unaware. They're here to make noise, we're only here to make money. See the difference?
What you will hear every day, if you choose to subject yourself to their crap, is that Google and Amazon are only up 6% this year. What you won't hear is that the Equally-weighted Technology Index just broke out to new all-time highs relative to the traditional Market Cap-Weighted Technology Index.
Every month I host a conference call for Premium Members of Allstarcharts. By now I think you've noticed that we're really increasing the content on our YouTube Channel, so I thought it would add some value to include some of the highlights from this month's call.
It's an hour long video call and about 150 charts, but here are a few things that stood out this month:
A weakening US Dollar has been a positive catalyst for Stocks
Freeport McMoRan is a good example of the types of stocks benefiting from Dollar Weakness, on both a relative and absolute basis
London FTSE100 breaking out of a multi-decade base makes it hard to be bearish stocks from any sort of intermediate-term perspective
Our "Dow Fab 5" is breaking out to All-time highs
Crude Oil is beginning its next leg higher, which makes sense with stock prices rising as well
When it comes to market breadth, the Advance-Decline line is definitely one of our go-to's. This indicator calculates the net advancers. In other words, the number of advancing stocks less the number of declining stocks. This cumulative measure goes up and down over time, similar to the market indexes themselves.
Something to keep in mind is the fact that we use the Common Stocks Only A-D Line because there are other vehicles that trade on the NYSE, like closed-end funds for example. If we're analyzing the stock market, let's stick to just stocks in our indicators.
As part of my preparation for my Chart Summit presentation on market breadth, I'm looking at a lot of charts this week. In this post I'll share a bunch of them to provide some perspective on where US markets currently sit from a participation perspective.
