Long-term, we're bullish Equities in India and around the world, but are remaining patient in the near-term due to momentum and breadth divergences we've been seeing across major indexes, sectors, and individual names. It's happening in the US too.
We've been writing about this for a few weeks, so I wanted to follow up today and show the progression of that thesis.
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.
For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and eliminate the x and y-axes and and all labels eliminated to minimize bias. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. It can even be inverted or a custom index.
The point here is to not guess what it is, but instead to think about what you would do right now.Buy,Sell, or Do Nothing?
As long as Mr. Market wants to keep grinding volatility premiums in options lower, we'd be foolish not to be buyers of long calls with expirations 4-6 months out in individual names that are showing signs of upward momentum. Who are we to argue with Mr. Market?
The next candidate on our list hails from the telecom space.
What does it mean when you hear, "Overhead Supply"? How does that help anyone?
The market is a beautiful thing. It's driven by supply and demand dynamics, or buyers and sellers, based on reasons that we don't need to know. I've noticed that the majority of market participants like to worry about the "why?". We choose to worry about the "Where, When and For How Long?". It seems like a much better use of our time, particularly if our only goal is to make money. We're not interested in writing gossip columns.
For me, overhead supply is when there are an overwhelming amount of sellers relative to the amount of buyers around a certain price. Sometimes you get the smartass in the room that says, "Well JC for every buyer there must be a seller". Yes, dummy, but there aren't an equivalent amount of willing buyers and sellers and every price. That's why stocks move.
Are you guys using Koyfin yet? If not, I suggest you start.
Koyfin is my favorite new financial data and analytics platform. It seems like every day I learn about a new feature that helps me throughout my process. It's so easy to use and everyone I speak to loves the product.
Full disclosure, we're investors in the company. But we're investors for a reason. The product is amazing and I believe founder Rob Koyfman is creating a ton of value to our community, and not just technical analysts but everyone.
Last week I was at the CMT Symposium in New York and had a chance to chat with Rob so he could explain exactly what Koyfin is and some of the new features that they will be rolling out this quarter.
The "Gap and Go" pattern is popular with intraday and swing traders. It is a situation where a stock gaps higher out of a base (often earnings driven), then punishes the opportunistic faders who are playing for the stock to come back and "fill the gap." The opposite happens, resulting in a slow, painful grind higher hurting all those short holders.
We've got such a situation developing in the semis space, where a slow grind up has beaten all the faders to a pulp and now it appears we might be setting up for one final push to inflict hurt on the final stubborn bears.
"Indian bank stocks? Why are you looking at those?"
Stocks in America don't go up and down because of what is happening in America. Stocks in America go up and down because of what is happening all over the world. This relationship also applies to bonds, commodities and currency markets.
Today I want to focus on what we're seeing globally so we can make much more informed decisions about the current trend. Do we want to be buying stocks or do we want to be selling them?
In today's video I sit down with Phil Pearlman to discuss Phone Addiction. Many of us are unaware and even more people don't even care to be aware. Is it the power that we have in our phones? Or do the phones have the power over us? Phil offers some advice on this front and shares what he's been doing.
One of the most important parts of my process in selecting potential options trades is to assess the current volatility situation. Everything else being equal, I like to put on trades that position myself for volatility to revert to its mean. In other words, if volatility is high and therefore options prices are high, I want to express my directional trade in such a way that it might also benefit from volatility falling back to "normal" levels. Conversely, when volatility is low, I want any position I consider to benefit from a rise in volatility -- if there is one.
There are no free lunches on Wall Street, nor in options trading. But betting on volatility reverting to the mean might be one of the closest things to it. The trick is in the timing.
Of all the most liquid ETFs I track, the one that has been the quietest lately -- in terms of price action and volatility in options pricing -- is the Retail Sector ETF $XRT. In fact, volatility in $XRT is currently at the lowest levels last seen in 2018 before the Christmas selloff. This has given me a wild idea...
