Today's chart of the week outlines a breakout in the Cybersecurity ETF HACK relative to the S&P 500. In this post we'll discuss which indiivudal names are offering the best reward/risk opportunity.
The iShares Real Estate ETF IYR is up more than 17% from its Christmas Eve lows and sitting just off all-time highs. Can this rally continue and if so, what are the names we want to be buying to take advantage of this theme?
We'll provide our perspective on those questions in this post.
I was down in San Francisco Friday afternoon shopping for a tuxedo for my wedding in a few months. Whenever I'm in the city I like to get Chinese food and swing by the tv networks and say hi. Friday I got to do both.
At Allstarcharts we incorporate what we call a, "Top/Down Approach". To us, this means we start with the broader picture and analyze all of the Indexes around the world. Only then do we dive into our own country or the country in question. This is where we try and identify the trends in the S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and many others. Next we break it down to the sector and industry level like Healthcare, Banks or Technology. Finally when the relative strength and momentum line up in a particular group of stocks, that's when we try and find the best risk vs reward opportunities available to express a given theme.
For me, it's not just the S&P500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This is a market of stocks and I think recognizing what stocks themselves are doing is just as important as identifying the trends of the major indexes. By recognizing the behavior of some of the biggest components in the market, we can approach it from a more informed position.
There are 3 stocks in particular that stood out in my Monthly Chart review this week. I always say it, this exercise which I only perform 12 times per year at the end of each month, is the most valuable part of my entire process. There is no question. It forces us to take a step back and identify the primary trends.
You guys who know me already know that this is my favorite exercise of them all. We only do this 12 times a year. Let's just say that it takes you an hour, if you really want to take your time, that's 12 hours of your entire year. Think about the amount of time you spend each year performing other analysis. As far as I'm concerned, it's not even close. These 6 hours (for me it's 6) are easily the most valuable 6 hours I spend all year analyzing markets.
This process allows us to take a step back, which forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend. It's impossible not to, especially when you're seeing similar themes across Indexes, sectors and asset classes.
With every month comes a new set of monthly charts, so I want to use this post to step back and point out the major changes since the last time we looked at them in November.
As I was updating our Monthly Chartbook today for members, one theme that stuck out clear as day is that there are really two separate markets in Indian Stocks right now.
Short-term strength in Precious Metals continues, so I want to do an in-depth analysis of the space like I did last August to see if we're now entering "The Golden Age of Precious Metals".
One chart that I think sums up how I feel about Precious Metals is an equally-weighted index of Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium. While no longer in a long-term downtrend, it's not in an uptrend either. All that can be said is that it's testing the top of a multi-year range. Not all that exciting.
Coming into the year, the most important chart I was watching was the US Dollar. As far as risk appetite was concerned, I felt the Dollar would be a great tell. The way I saw it, the Dollar rallied throughout 2018 to achieve its upside objective and then broke the uptrend line from those former lows. If we were to just rip through those key levels without at least some kind of pause or consolidation, it would most likely be because of a tremendous flight to safety. Stocks would probably be doing poorly under those conditions.
You know what is not a characteristic of a downtrend? All-time highs!
Friday afternoon, the Medical Equipment Index went out at new all-time weekly closing highs relative to the S&P500. We look to relative strength as a leading or coincident indicator for stocks. This sector's behavior is no different.
There is a reason why Medical Equipment stocks look like Tech stocks and not the rest of Healthcare. They're essentially tech stocks trapped in the body of a healthcare stock. Although they are indeed in the Healthcare space, we need to recognize how they behave, the relative strength vs their peers and then treat them as their own group.
In case you missed it, Medical Equipment stocks went out yesterday at their highest weekly close relative to the S&P500 EVER. This is not evidence of a downtrend or any kind of weakness. Quite the opposite in fact:
