I think a really important concept that too often gets overlooked is the power of keeping an open mind. Why must we stick to a bearish or bullish stance? What is wrong with neutral sometimes? Just because our upside get hit, does that mean we need to flip bearish and start shorting everything? I don't think so. I much prefer taking profits when objectives get achieved and then reevaluating once we get more price data. We don't know what is going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month. No one does. So let's appreciate the fact that the future is unknown and therefore all possibilities should be considered.
Today's Chart of the Week represents what I consider to be part of the bullish case for the S&P500 in 2016. I'm not ready to pound the table bullish, or bearish for that matter, but if this one plays out the way it looks, I would argue that it's a giant feather in the hat for the bulls. This is the mystery chart that I tweeted out yesterday, for those of you who have been asking.
Once a week I do my Global Macro review where I annotate and take notes on every country's index around the world. This analysis is on multiple timeframes so we focus on both the weekly timeframe going back 7-10 years and the daily timeframe over the past 6-12 months. The weekly charts are designed to get structural perspective while the daily timeframes are more for short-term to intermediate-term execution.
In this week's analysis, Brazil stands out as it gets back above the late 2008 lows. Over the short-term, Brazil has been a favorite long of ours since it first got back above the September lows. There was a major theme among global stock indexes, particularly in Latin America, where prices were getting back above previous lows in late January and early February. We saw a monster move higher in Brazil since then, as we did in Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, etc:
This week I was over at the Nasdaq in Times Square discussing the current market environment with Frances Horodelski on Canada's Business News Network. The weight of the evidence is suggesting a cautious stance up here after all of our upside targets have been hit in recent weeks. Remember, we've been bullish stocks, globally since late January, and in the U.S. since early February. When our upside objectives are hit, it's time to reevaluate. That's what we're doing now.
The weight of the evidence has been building in favor of the bears over the last week or two, making the US equity weakness this week anything but surprising. Throughout the duration of this post I'll outline the evidence that I've been noticing over the last two weeks and what it means for us as market participants moving forward.
Yen Strength - The Yen broke out structurally late last year and hasn't looked back since. Tactically my upside targets were hit this week, but structurally this market has a lot more room to run. Given the high negative correlation between the Yen and US equities, this should continue to be a headwind for equity markets going forward.
We've had a heck of a rally in stocks over since late January, led by emerging markets, energy and metal stocks. Starting in mid-February the U.S. and other developed nations got the memo and started to play catch-up. We couldn't be happier with the performance of the stock market since then. But over the past couple of weeks all of our upside targets have been hit; all of the U.S. Indexes and sectors and about 90% of global indexes. So I've therefore been pretty neutral towards stocks since late last month, but I finally turned more bearish earlier this week.
Here is a market neutral trade that I think is definitely worth paying attention to. Whether you're bullish or bearish, this breakout is not something we should ignore:
From the Brazilian Real and Australian Dollar to the Turkish Lira, many global currencies have been gaining significant traction relative to the US Dollar over the past several weeks and months. These currency moves have also had significant impacts on the equity markets of their respective countries as they tend to be positively correlated.
Last week the New Zealand Dollar joined that group by breaking out across multiple timeframes.
I think there is a nice shorting opportunity in General Electric that we can take advantage of this month. There's nothing better than making money when a stock is falling. The reason is because stocks tend to move a lot faster on the way down, than on their way up. It's the old, Escalator Up & Elevator Down behavior.
The way I see it, $GE hit our upside target of $31 last November, so there's been no reason to own it. This target is based on the 161.8% Fibonacci extension of the massive consolidation throughout 2013-2015. Here is a weekly chart showing prices getting up there, pulling back in December and January, and now more recently rallying back up towards that $31 level and beyond:
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to put all social media stocks into one category. We do our best with ETFs like $SOCL, but they can be heavily skewed by certain stocks and it ignores others with smaller market caps. Also, what does a company LinkedIn have to do with Yelp or Yahoo? I think we need to be careful grouping them into just one category, and keep in mind that they are all individuals with their own problems as well as their own unique positive qualities.
The reason I bring this up is because yesterday afternoon, Michael Santoli tweeted out a mystery chart asking followers whether it was a buy or sell:
It's been a while since I laid out a bunch of short ideas. As you guys know, I've been really bullish since late January. But hey, upside targets get hit, sentiment shifts, and things eventually change. Here are a list of Dow Components that I think are good shorting opportunities today:
The financial sector of the S&P 500 has been a major laggard over the last few years and 2016 is no exception with the sector down roughly 6% YTD.
The five year daily ratio chart of XLF / SPY represents this relationship. This ratio broke down out of a multi-year downtrend channel while momentum confirmed a bearish range by moving into oversold territory. These conditions, combined with the presence of a downward sloping 200 day moving average, suggest that the under-performance of financials relative to the broader market is likely to continue.
We've just witnessed one of the most epic rallies in the stock market that we've seen in a long time. Remember, this has been dominated by global indexes, particularly Emerging Markets, not U.S. Stocks. We could not be happier to see this rally progress so well as we've been pounding the table to be long since late January. By mid-February, the U.S. and other developed markets put in their bottoms and started to play catch up to the rest of the world. But the underperformance of the U.S. has continued anyway.
Today's Chart Of The Week represents what could potentially be the start of a major structural improvement for U.S. Stocks: