I have to give credit to our Intermarket Analysis work for a lot of our success over the years. This "Cross-Asset" perspective is incredibly valuable, particularly when it comes to identifying and staying with important trends. As a supplement to our Technical work in U.S. Stocks and Indexes, we incorporate a variety of Intermarket relationships to help us formulate a thesis. These include Bonds, Commodities and Currencies.
When it comes to safety, I don't care what people believe is a safe haven, I only care how the market reacts when it needs to go safe. When markets stressed and volatility rises, stocks fall in price and US Treasury Bonds and Japanese Yen reap the benefits. When did Yen and Bonds get strong? Summer of 2015 just as the S&P500 was topping out. When did Yen and Bonds peak? When stocks got going several months before the 2016 elections. Both of these are near their 52-week lows, which makes perfect sense with Stocks at all-time highs.
The one thing we do know is that stocks are not in a downtrend. New all-time highs are consistent with a stock market environment where prices are rising. We saw new all-time monthly closing highs in most of the major U.S. Stock Indexes last week. The question is more about whether or not we're starting to see this trend change or deteriorate in any way. The short answer is no. We do not see enough evidence to support a bearish approach towards equities, quite the opposite in fact.
Mid and small-caps have been hit hard over the last month, so I wanted to do a quick update post on how we should be approaching these indexes over the short-term.
We've got 46 days until November expiration and it's always good to have some income trades on for every monthly expiration. It just makes good sense for somewhat diversifying our portfolio. We don't want to have only directional and/or long premium plays on. If the market goes sideways or falls somewhat from here, we need to have some cushion built in somewhere.
After reviewing all the most liquid ETFs we track, I've identified our best candidate based on relatively high implied volatility and range-bound trading action.
Earlier this month we did two Energy updates from the top-down, ultimately drilling into the best individual stock opportunities in both Canada and the US. I feel like there's been a lot of noise around Crude Oil and Energy in general because of OPEC, Trade Wars, and whatever else the media can come up with, so I just want to do a quick update on what we're seeing in Energy Commodities.
September has been a month where the market's experienced some sharp moves to the downside, so I want to use this post to review what we spoke about last month and provides some context around any changes that have occurred since then.
Kim Sokoloff is a trader's trader. Whenever I see her she is always telling me about her trading day, what she was buying and what she was selling. I have a huge appreciation for the passion she brings to the markets on a daily basis. We all have different time horizons, some longer-term and some shorter-term. Kim is concerned with what stocks are doing over a a few days. For her, "long-term" is only a couple of weeks. In this episode, Kim walks us through her morning routine and thought process throughout the trading day. We've had analysts, money managers and traders on the podcast, but in this conversation we really dive deep into what it's like trading every day from an apartment in lower Manhattan. I really enjoyed this discussion with a very active swing trader and practicing technician.
As the Technology sector goes, so often goes the market. And the Tech Select Sector ETF $XLK has been going nowhere -- increasingly so -- over the past several weeks.
Does anybody here think broader market indices go sideways from now until the end of the year?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
If, or rather when, indices start busting a move, we're pretty confident that the technology sector will have a major say in the direction and pace. And we've got a plan to participate, whichever way it goes.
In life we have the saying "Make hay while the sun shines", suggesting that we take advantage of something while conditions are favorable because we don't know when those conditions will end or when they will be favorable again. In markets it's similar in that we want to be our most aggressive when the majority of the evidence is pointing in one direction or another.
Sticking with a theme we’ve been discussing with All Star Options subscribers for the past month or so, we expect to continue keeping things simple around here until the market tells us it’s time to change.
One way we’ve been keeping things simple is to be buyers of straight long call options. It’s still a bull market in spite of what gets shouted to you on TV, and volatilities continue to be low — pricing options relatively cheaply. So as long as the volatility in any individual name is still cheap, we’re always going to be looking at long slightly out-of-the-money call options to participate in bullish plays while affordably limiting our risk.
One variant of this play that also holds a lot of interest for me — especially in higher priced names where I might wish to limit my risk a little bit more — is the long call calendar spread which consists of a short call in a near month combined with a long call at the same strike in a further out month for a net debit. It gives us three ways to win!
There's always a tell. Before the most recent rally we've seen in U.S. stocks since August, Aerospace & Defense stocks were breaking out. It was hard to be bearish equities with this A&D group, an important part of the Industrials sector, and a leader among leaders, coming out of an 8-month base to new all-time highs. Also, this came within the context of a tremendous uptrend, so an upside resolution was perfectly normal. That breakout was telling for stocks as an asset class. Today I think it's Technology. What this sector does here should tell us a lot about this market.
After the new weightings, Technology is going to represent 20% of the S&P500, which is still a large chunk, despite being cut from 26% of the S&P500 pre-adjustments. It's funny, strong markets do splits, not reverse splits. I'll take this as a positive for Tech. And if it's not, then I think we have a problem. That's what we're looking at here today.
