March rally takes some sting off of a challenging Q1.
Short-term strength not yet reflected in longer-term trends.
More new lows than new highs in the US, but Emerging Market new high list expands.
Stocks continued to bounce off of their March lows last week. It’s not quite lipstick on a pig but this move does take some of the sting off of what has been a weak Q1 for equities. All eleven sectors in the S&P 500 are now in positive territory for March, but only three (Energy, Utilities and Financials) have YTD gains and two of those, just barely so. Four sectors, accounting for more than 50% of the market cap of the S&P 500, are still down 8% or more heading into the final week of the quarter.
In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.
Is There Enough in the Tank?
Pretty much everything in the world of energy has been on fire for the last quarter. Crude oil and energy stocks have been the stand-out performers this year as both have enjoyed a swift leg higher since early January. Despite the impressive price action, both are at logical levels to do some consolidating. Crude Oil and the Energy Sector SPDR (XLE) are challenging critical levels of overhead supply at former highs. Both of these areas have acted as resistance in the past, so it would not be unusual for sellers to show up once again. While the primary trends are still very much intact for energy stocks and futures, a breather here and some digestion of the recent gains would be constructive. The next key piece of information should come in the form of how that digestion looks. Do we correct through price, or time?
Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.
By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.
Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:
* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.
Macro Universe:
Our macro universe was green this week as 57% of our list closed higher with a median return of 0.42%.
The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was this week's big winner, tacking on 36bps and closing just shy of 2.5%.
The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a weekly loss of -14.96%.
There was a 13% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 34%.
These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.
This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday April 5th @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.
Good morning everyone! This dispatch comes to you from deep in the northernmost reaches of Northern California, on the edge of the great Redwoods National Park.
I flew out here on Sunday morning with my oldest friend (since we were both five years old). After landing and shopping for some provisions, we got a short three-mile hike in during the afternoon/early evening to get our feet acclimated. But it was just a warm-up for the 30 miles we hope to cover today through Wednesday. Yesterday, the weather was perfect, the trail conditions were excellent, and the giant Redwoods were absolutely stunning! And we're just getting started. Hopefully, the weather continues to hold up (fingers crossed!).
Of course, I brought my laptop, and since my East Coast friend was suffering from a little jet lag, he crashed early last night. That left me some time to rip through charts in my hotel room, as one, such as me, does.
During my scanning, I couldn't help but get fully distracted by this chart of $GLD:
In last week's letter, we outlined a handful of key bullish developments leading us to forecast a high probability of an upward resolution from this consolidation.
Alleviation of the selling in futures and renewed spot demand pointed to a high probability of Bitcoin resolving higher out of this multi-month trading range.
As of the writing of this note, we've seen this take place, with Bitcoin taking out resistance at 46,000.
We are almost done with the first quarter of the calendar year and the last quarter of our financial year. There are certain sectors that are peeping out from beneath the surface and hence attracting attention. Is this a theme we may see play out in the quarter going forward? Most likely. Most sectors have remained sideways or subdued in their move and they are finally picking a side!
Today we are here to discuss one such sector and some interesting setups that one could take advantage of.
Let's see what's on the roster sheet today.
We mentioned this in the recently concluded conference call, and we'll say it again- Bouncebacks are here! From within the price bouncebacks that we're seeing certain sectors are displaying more strength. One such sector is the Industrials. We're talking about the Industrial Manufacturing sector, so don't go looking for the US sector XLI.
BUT, if you did, you wouldn't be entirely wrong. The Industrials sector (XLI) in the US is picking up pace as we speak. So this is one of those times where you see similar themes play out across different geographies. Fun when that happens, isn't it?...
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Cyclical stocks are all the craze.
If you're doing well this year, it's because you own these stocks. If you're not, it's because you don't own these stocks.
Whether we're talking about energy, agricultural inputs, or industrial metals, these are the kinds of industry groups that are showing relative strength.
And, to be clear, this is nothing new. This theme has been in place for over a year now.
The only new development is that we're seeing upside momentum in these names pick up. As a result, the gap between these winners and the rest of the market has widened to historic levels.
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.
These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.
It has all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.
The Hall of Famers is simple.
We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.
Here’s this week’s list:
And here’s how we arrived at it:
We filtered out any stocks that are below their May 10th 2021 high, which is when new 52-week highs peaked...