We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in mid-July to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.
This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.
The Top/Down approach to markets is at the core of what we do at All Star Charts. That means starting at the asset class level and peeling back each layer to refine our view of the smaller components that make up that asset class. With each new layer, we discover information that helps us form our weight of the evidence conclusion.
That brings us to our weekly column, The Top/Down Take, where we hope to educate readers on how we execute this process and highlight its value through the analysis of popular stocks.
Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood."
What we do is analyze the most popular stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.
We are using a variety of new sources to generate the list of most popular names. There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.
Whether we're measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers... there is a lot of overlap.
The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin the cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.
What's the bear case for equities if Financials start to outperform for the first time in, what feels like, forever?
A funny thing happened this week. The Nasdaq, as well as some of the major Large-Cap US Indexes, were under pressure for a couple of days. But did you realize which which sector was the best performer during that selling?
Financials.
Wait, what? Relative strength in Financials?
Looking at this a little deeper, if Financials were ever going to start to outperform, this would be a perfectly logical place for that to start. In fact, this is exactly where they started to outperform after the Financial crisis:
The Fixed Income, Commodity, and Currency markets are near and dear to my heart. Ever since I began learning Technical Analysis, I've always loved analyzing things that are "off the beaten path." This included everything from Interest Rates to Soybeans to the Norwegian Krone. Equities are great and all, but this is the stuff that gets me up in the morning.
In addition to the blog posts we do on the site, I've wanted to explore new ways to share that passion with you all and show why even if you're not investing in these markets directly, they're worth paying attention to.
That brings us to my weekly show, "What The FICC?"
In this weekly video series, I'll be highlighting the most important chart or theme from these three asset classes while doing my best to tie that analysis back to Equities through an intermarket signal or a trade idea.
So is this two-day selloff a start of something new? Or is this a gift from the Pullback Gods to get into those longs positions you were FOMO-ing about?
Energy stocks and Crude Oil have been trending in opposite directions over the trailing three months.
We know these kinds of intermarket relationships can dislocate for extended periods of time, but some recent developments in the space have us thinking it may be time for this divergence to correct itself... and it's likely to come in the form of Crude catching down as opposed to stocks catching up.
In this post, we'll reveal this week's Mystery Chart and discuss what the recent action in Oil could mean for Energy stocks in the weeks/months ahead.
Two weeks ago on "What The FICC?" I discussed the potential long-term trend change in Agricultural Commodities and the vehicles to take advantage of it.
It's true that August was a good month for Lean Hogs, Corn, Cocoa, Soybean Oil, and others, but in this post, I want to temper expectations about what we should expect going further.
This week I was a guest on the Confessions of a Market Maker Podcast. This was a really fun discussion about Dow Theory, Perma-Bears, Fibonacci & optimal wine/food pairings. I think it will give you a chance to get to me a little more. Life isn't just about charts and markets!
It's been a monster run since March for equities, especially in the United States. Rotation, breadth expansion, momentum thrusts, all the works.
So what's going to stop this train? The opposite of those things, most likely.
I think the bear case starts with small-caps. I was taught to dance with the girl who brought me to the dance. Small-caps were one of the key reasons why we got so bearish in early October 2018 and then again this year in early February 2020.
So why ignore them now? I say stick with that.
As we discussed last night on our Monthly Charts Strategy Session (Premium), if you're going to be shorting stocks and betting on the end, I think both Small-caps and Micro-caps need to be below their June highs:
