Last week in our note to Institutional Clients we highlighted the potential for mean-reversion in the relative performance of Small and Micro-Caps, driven by rotation into Financials and Healthcare.
Below is a chart of the Micro-Cap Index (IWC) relative to the S&P 1500, confirming a failed breakdown and bullish momentum divergence. As long as prices are above 0.1405, this ratio looks ripe for some mean-reversion to the upside.
Click on chart to enlarge view.
Same goes for the Russell 2000 relative to the S&P 500, failing to hold its new marginal low as momentum diverges.
While we wait to see whether or not this retest of all-time highs is a successful one, we want to define our risk on the long side in individual names that continue to lead the market higher.
One subsector that remains a consistent source of these setups is Software.
Below is a chart of Software relative to the Technology Sector overall, finding support right where it needed to at our previous price target. Whether prices can get back to their year-to-date highs will be an important tell, but for now the uptrend in this ratio remains strongly intact.
April 10th we looked for a bounce in Healthcare Providers and were early, so several of our trades were quickly stopped out and others didn't trigger at all. Medical Devices were the last subsector standing and once they were hit, we thought that Healthcare was likely close to a short-term bottom.
Given the extreme oversold readings we were seeing in our work (like percentage of XLV components hitting oversold conditions last week) and the subsequent bounce to start this week, I want to outline five names showing relative strength in the space that could benefit from continued mean-reversion in the sector.
More importantly, they offer well-defined risk and a reward/risk that's skewed in our favor.
Rotation into Energy stocks continues to pick up. While the reward/risk opportunities at the sector/subsector ETF level aren't great, there are several attractive setups within individual stocks.
In this post I'm going to point out seven names within Energy ETFs XLE, XOP, OIH, AMLP, CRAK, and FCG with extremely well-defined risk and skewed reward/risk at current levels.
Half are buying strength (higher probability, but lower reward/risk) and the others are mean-reversion setups (lower probability, but higher reward/risk). Pick your poison.
Last week's Mystery Chart Reveal focused on the rotation into Industrial stocks. In this post I'm going to point out five names in this sector from the S&P 1500 with extremely well-defined risk and skewed reward/risk at current levels.
These are the registration details for the monthly conference call held for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.
This month’s Conference Call will be held on Wednesday April 17th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call:
Healthcare Providers quickly went from hero to zero in Q4 of 2018 after a failed breakout and bearish momentum divergence, but we're beginning to see signs of a potential mean-reversion over the short-term.
Let's start with Healthcare relative to the S&P 500, which has been unable to find its footing since topping 5 months ago. Prices have now retraced 61.8% of their 2018 rally, which may offer some short-term support and transition the trend from down to sideways.
The market remains a “hot mess", so we’re looking under the surface at breadth and risk appetite measures to identify clues as to the potential direction that this 15-month range will resolve itself.
Today I want to look at one of those measures, Consumer Discretionary stocks vs Consumer Staples.
If you're a long-only fund manager that believes the market is headed higher, you're going to be in more aggressive areas of the market like Discretionary. If you believe the market is headed lower or isn't going to do much, you're going to be in the lower beta, often higher dividend Consumer Staple stocks.
So what's happening in these sectors right now?
The Equal-Weight Consumer Discretionary vs Equal-Weight Consumer Staples continues to struggle with a flat 200-day moving average and confluence of support/resistance, but just made new 6-month highs this week. While this chart still work to do to confirm an intermediate-term uptrend, this is extremely constructive action and is suggesting that risk appetite among market participants is beginning to pick up.
The Equally-Weighted Semiconductor Index recently made new all-time highs, while the cap-weighted sits a few below its 2018 highs. What's next for Semis? That's what I hope to answer in this post.