The last two trading days (Thursday-Friday July 26-27) have been somewhat challenging for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. But there was some relative strength in the financials, in particular, American Express $AXP which last week printed a new all-time high.
This isn't entirely surprising to us as we've been watching the financials absorb cash flows as one of the next to step up in the ongoing sector rotations that continue to lead this bull market higher. And we've got a plan to capitalize.
The broad-based Financials ETF $XLF has gone basically sideways for the majority of the year, but under the surface there has been strength in individual names and sub-sectors like Broker-Dealers and Exchanges. We've spoken a lot about them in the past, so today I want to talk focus on several stocks showing relative strength that are setting up on the long side.
As a group, the semi-conductors sector has been underperforming this year, but signs are pointing to an upward trend declaration soon. This isn't a wildly bullish announcement, but neither do we need to be wildly bullish to make money on a mildly bullish opportunity.
With earnings coming up on July 30 and some significant recent support levels to lean against, we're going to take advantage of the 'earnings premium' being priced in to $KLAC options today.
The Nasdaq Composite closed at another all-time high yesterday, but some are questioning this rally's sustainability due to the under-performance of the Semiconductor Index. Given we're open-minded about our bullish Technology thesis, we want to use this post to take explore the sector's recent performance and its possible implications.
This post is part two of the semiconductor discussion that began here, with us outlining the current trend in Semiconductors from the top-down. If you've not read that yet, I suggest you do as this post will focus on the specific stocks we want to be involved in to capitalize on the eventual continuation of this sector's uptrend.
This week I was in New York meeting with partners and old friends. On Tuesday I was down at the Bloomberg Headquarters chatting with Catherine Murray about what we're seeing from a technical perspective. We discuss Technology, Medical Equipment stocks and where we are within this secular bull market. Here's the video of the interview:
Texas Instruments $TXN appears to have authored no surprises in their quarterly earnings call on Tuesday afternoon, announcing well telegraphed results (following a recent CEO shakeup) that had basically no effect on share prices in the after-hours session.
That's good news, because now traders can get to work on completing its now 27 week base and not have to worry too much about any headline risk to get in the way in the near future. With all-time highs within range, we've got a plan to participate.
Over the last week or so we've seen an upside reversal in many of the Public Sector Bank stocks across the large, mid, and small-cap segments of the market. This has many wondering whether or not this is "the bottom" in this sector or if it's simply "a bottom" within the context of many structural downtrends. In this post we'll take a look into the sector to see what the weight of evidence suggests might be the answer to this question.
In the latest monthly conference call for All Star Charts subscribers, JC lays out a compelling case for being long leaders in the transportation space -- notably trucking and railroads.
We're not one to step in front of trends, especially those riding on rails, and with a well received earnings report released last week pushing $CSX to new highs, we see nothing but green lights ahead to our price target. And when momentum is coupled with collapsing volatility, it sets up pretty compelling opportunities to participate in some highly leveraged upside.
During our July Members Only Conference Call we discussed a lot of the big-picture trends from around the world and in India, but we wanted to do a long post discussing what we're seeing in the small-cap space. In this post I'll cover what we're seeing in the index itself, as well as get into some of its most actionable components. Also check out our mid-cap post here.
