This week I joined Tyler Wood and David Lundgren on Fill The Gap, the official podcast of the CMT Association.
Being asked to come on to this one was a real honor for me.
Since day 1 I've been a huge fan of the Association and the members who came before me. I can tell you honestly that I don't know where I would be today if it wasn't for the CMT Association and more importantly, the community of members all over the world.
It truly has been one of the best experiences of my entire life and for that I will forever be grateful.
In this conversation talk about how I became a Technician, the first books I started reading, who my mentors were, starting a business, becoming a Wine Sommelier and the new technical tools and strategies that technicians are now able to incorporate into Crypto and other digital assets.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Benchmark yields have moved in a vertical line higher since the beginning of March. This isn't just the case in the US; we're seeing similar action all across the globe.
But as rates rally higher and higher, more and more classic intermarket relationships are failing to confirm the move.
Yes, commodities and commodity-related stocks remain resilient, and bonds are an absolute dumpster fire.
Most other assets we would expect to do well in a rising rate environment simply aren’t. This is especially true for the banks!
Meanwhile, those groups that we'd expect to underperform in this kind of environment, such as utilities and other defensive stocks, are actually outperforming.
All of this speaks to risk-aversion, not risk-seeking behavior.
Let’s take a look at some of our favorite intermarket ratios and put these bearish divergences into perspective....
I got a message last night that Ned Davis is retiring from the eponymous firm he launched more than four decades ago. Turns out, he’s not quite retiring – but he is stepping back. Either way, it’s a good time to reflect on his impact on the industry.
His data-driven, evidence-based approach to the market can seem obvious to those of us who are following the trail he blazed. But it would have been less obvious at a time when data access and computing power were more limited than they are now. It was revolutionary then, and is the gold-standard today.
More than ever, the industry is filled with those who want to tell stories about what should happen without making space for feedback about whether that is happening. Many want to sit still and find ways to have their priors confirmed, rather than having a disciplined and objective approach toward weighing the evidence. Being data-driven is more than just doing a little math and including a decimal place. Knowing what you want the answer to be before you even ask the question is not evidence-based, it’s narrative-driven.
As sophisticated as public markets can be, they often have little quirks.
Everyone's heard about the McRib indicator: The S&P 500 has a higher daily return when the McRib is available at McDonald's than when it's not available.
Or how about the magazine covers? That's another classic anecdotal indicator.
Another one is the conference dip.
It's said that when all the traders are out at conferences, the market dips.
The annual CMT Association Symposium was notorious for this. Later on, we saw this during the big SALT conference in Vegas.
The old thought was that if all the big players are at a conference, who's left to buy?
It's funny because now we're seeing the dips during crypto conferences.
The talk of the town in the world of crypto is the recent Bitcoin conference taking place in Miami.
For this week's trade, we're selling an $XLI May 97/105 Strangle for approximately $2.85 net credit. This means we're naked short both the 97 puts and the 105 calls.
Get the full details, risk management procedures and targets for this trade here: