There have been many whipsaws in the Commodities' market as of late, with few intermediate-term trends allowing us to trade them with well-defined risk. Every now and again the market provides us with a clear opportunity, this time it's in the form of a breakdown in Tumeric.
There's a saying among market participants that "all gaps need to be filled" or "all gaps are eventually filled", but as with most market generalizations, this saying shouldn't be taken at face value.
This post is going to discuss the four types of gaps and explain why this phrase is not something any market participant should take seriously.
A conversation with Arun Chopra is one that makes you smarter. That's how I see it. Arun has formal training as both a CFA Charterholder and a CMT. He has helped produce award winning films at the Sundance Film Festival and he's on the same journey as us: to make money in the market. He uses a combination of global macro, technical and sentiment indicators that he is working on putting into a more quantitative model. Picking his brain about the process and his experiences in this endeavor was really enlightening. In this episode we discuss current markets, sector rotation, credit spreads widening and the possibilities for the US Stock Market Indexes to break to new lows. I really enjoyed this discussion with Arun. I always do.
We always hear the phrases "fading strength" or "selling into strength" from market participants, but what does that mean from a practical standpoint? How do you know what to sell? When do you sell?
In light of those questions, this week's "Chart of the Week" is going to help provide some context around the types of characteristics we look for when choosing stocks to fade.
This week's "Chart of the Week" answers the question about what characteristics determine the stocks we're fading strength in, so this premium post will outline the best setups I found during my review of the S&P 1500. If you haven't read the other post, click here to do so as it will provide more context around these trade ideas.
Over the last three weeks Sun Pharmaceuticals has been doing its best Deutsche Bank impression, losing roughly a third of its value and trading at levels not seen since March 2013.
As the largest component of the Nifty Pharmaceuticals Index this performance has been a major drag on the index, however, equally-weighted charts can offer us a much better read of the sector's health.
This post is a continuation of our "Free Chart of The Week", which focused on the use of an equally-weighted Pharmaceuticals Index to make the case that the sector is in better health than the cap-weighted index suggests.
In this post, we'll use that information to identify the stocks in this sector offering us the best reward/risk opportunities.
This past weekend we got new Monthly Charts, and overall the themes we discussed last month are very similar. With that being said, we'll use this post to discuss a few notable developments.
I've seen way too much at this point to underestimate what the market is capable of doing. People call me all the time and say, "JC crazy market huh?" or "Did you see that crazy move in XYZ". Yea I saw it. So what? As Jay-Z said in his latest album,
if everybody's crazy, you're the one that's insane".
How high can a stock go? Much higher than you think. How low can a stock go? Zero. How low can your account go? In the negatives where you actually owe money. That's the deal we make when we enter the marketplace.
So there is being overly dramatic and there is being realistic. We've seen these clowns calling for market crashes since a month after the last one was over. They prey on vulnerable hard working citizens preaching the end of the world and they make a ton of money doing it. They're terrible people.
How do you feel about a little buy-the-dip action in the crude oil space? Given that there's juicy options premiums to sell into here, it is certainly worth a discussion.
It has been quite a one-way ride lower for crude since early October, but the All Star Charts team may have noticed something that might make it worthwhile to dip our toes into these slightly contaminated waters:
In addition to improvements in sentiment, we’re seeing bullish momentum divergences being formed and/or confirmed across the board in the Energy Commodities themselves, as well as their corresponding US Equity Sectors.
This not only signals some potential exhaustion on the side of sellers, but more importantly, it allows us to define our risk on the long side which we haven’t been able to do since prices broke back below their July highs.
You hear it all the time, "Cash is King". But we forget that it really can be. Not all the time, very few times in fact, but cash does serve a great purpose.
There are a lot of institutions that are not allowed to go to cash, as part of their mandate. The majority of investors, however, do have that option. Why not use it?
You're going to see a lot of the passive investing community advise against cash. "Market sell-offs are an opportunity to buy more at lower levels", they say. "You're not disciplined or smart enough to get back in", they preach. "Just buy and hold and everything will be ok". It's all based off this theory that the market always goes up. I guess if you trust data based off the tiny sample sizes that we have, you'll believe anything.
Crude Oil is down roughly 35% over the last two months as record bullish sentiment unwound and prices fell in what was essentially a straight line. There hasn't been any reason to bottom-fish this market, but today we received our first indication that a short-term bottom may be in.
