Two Charts From The Big Picture Conference

I was fortunate enough to spend most of the day at the 2012 Big Picture Conference. I've been listening to a pretty bearish tone and had to step out for minute. Other than Quantitative-minded James O'Shaughnessy, most of the talk coming from the speakers has been scary, to say the least. I came over to the office to make a couple of calls and figured I'd share two charts that stuck out to me from Michael Belkin's presentation.

I'm sure (hope) that Barry will post all of the slides from each of the speakers. But for now we'll look at these.

Belkin isn't very optimistic on Equities. Quite the opposite, in fact. For long-only managers, he thinks cash is the best move. For hedge funds and other participants that can take advantage of the short side, he points to other alternatives. The first trade is Long Staples/Short S&Ps. He referenced the 200 period moving average as a great tool to use and thinks this chart looks promising (Long $XLP / Short $SPY):

A big problem area that he sees in the marketplace today is Technology. Belkin thinks we need to get out of Tech and brought up an Apple chart that is potentially topping out. We've been talking about this name specifically on blog now for a few weeks (see here & here). He thinks a good trade here is to go Long Healthcare / Short Tech. Here is the weekly chart with the 200-week moving average. I don't see much here worth entering yet and I definitely think the first chart looks more promising. But things could change quickly, as we all know:

Heading back over to the conference now. I'm sure I'll post some more charts from the conference soon. Jim Bianco's presentation was awesome. He had charts for days. We love that!

Source:

2012 Big Picture Conference - 10/10/12

Tags: $XLP $SPY $XLK $XLV $AAPL