This past Wednesday I had the privilege of joining 7 world-class Market Technicians in the Stocktoberfest East Chart Battle Competition. It was a lot of fun to share my work with the 450+ conference attendees and surreal to share the stage with people I've learned from since day one of learning Technical Analysis. With that being said, I was knocked out in the second round by Charlie Bilello so I'm writing this post to show all three of my ideas in their entirety.
Commodity strength has been a clear theme over the intermediate term, with the energy complex and base metals doing a majority of the heavy lifting in helping the CRB Index break out of its 2+ year range. The 41% of the index made up of Agricultural commodities has seen mixed performance, with Cotton and Cocoa leading and Sugar and Coffee struggling to put in any sort of meaningful bottom. However, there has been some improvement in the action in Soybeans and Soybean Meal, as well as Corn and Wheat which should support the CRB Index in moving higher. With that being said, this post is going to focus on the three Soy related commodities.
I think seasonality is often misused. Although economic cycles, political climates and public markets are constantly changing, the behavior patterns of humans remain the same. I spend a lot of time studying cognitive behavior and markets and it is very clear how foolish humans can be, including the robots they build. We behave in specific ways during some parts of the year and completely different in others. Those cycles play a role in annual cycles.
One of the most popular, and misunderstood, is the old "Sell in May and Go Away". But what exactly does that mean? Should we blindly enter the month of May with a bearish selling strategy? Does that sound like a good idea? Historically stocks are up for the month of May about half the time and since 1950 the S&P and Dow average a 0% return. June has a similar history of 0% average returns and positive return close to half the time. But that's not really what we're interested in here, which is my point.
This is the most valuable analysis I do every month. When you sit there with some music on and just rip through monthly charts, it really gives you perspective. We're taking a step back and reanalyzing the trends. It's easy to get caught in the day-to-day noise. This exercise helps avoid getting whipped around. I encourage everyone to make their own list of Monthly Candles.
I just got back from a week in New York City and here's what I see: The winners keep winning, the losers keep losing, things keep getting better and people think they're getting worse. I like that combination.
When I was 18 years old I moved to the New York area and spent a total of 15 years out there, most of which was in the financial space surrounded by entrepreneurs, traders, investors, analysts, fintech, traditional media and the biggest names in financial social media.
For the past 3 year's I've lived in beautiful Sonoma Valley, CA in what some might describe as something of a bubble. I don't watch financial television. I'm not ‘in the know’ about the daily gossip except for what I see on twitter. And even then, I don't consume nearly as much of it as most people. I'm not at the Hunt & Fish club once a week, I don't attend every book party in New York and I'm not surrounded by financial journalists every day. I'm out.
Silver has been consolidating in an ever tightening range and signs are showing that a big move away from this consolidation is setting up. And this week, the Silver iShares ETF ($SLV) may have tipped it's hand to which direction the next big move will happen.
Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts India Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the India Share Market. We take a look at all of the NSE Indexes and Sectors as well as some of our own custom indexes. At Allstarcharts we have become known around the world for the top/down approach to stocks. After we analyze each of the indexes and sectors and have identified where the strength and weakness lies, then we break it down to individual stock opportunities. By having momentum, relative strength and market trend in our favor, the probabilities of success increase dramatically.
Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.
The new volatility regime in 2018 has caused many to question the uptrend in stocks that we've seen the past couple of years. In this call we will go over all of the markets around the world including intermarket relationships that help us identify whether risk appetite overwhelms any risk aversion we're seeing from institutional investors. On Thursday, we'll focus on a series of indicators that we look for to develop a list of stocks and commodities that we want to be buying throughout the 2nd quarter. I think there is more opportunity to profit today than we've seen in a long time.
This month's Conference Call will be held on Thursday April 19th at 7PM ET. Here are the Registration Details:
Over 90% of the time, sentiment data is completely useless to me. I only care about it when we see it at or near extremes, which is not often. Some people dismiss sentiment data altogether in favor of tools that can be used more frequently. Not me. I'll stay patient all day and just wait for my pitch. The unwinds from extremes in sentiment can be very powerful and last much longer than investors usually expect.
Currently, we're seeing an interesting setup in Silver. Commercial Hedgers, which are traditionally the "Smart Money", have on pretty much their smallest hedges of all-time. In fact, Commercial Hedgers, who are always short Silver Futures, it's just how short, are now almost net long! That never ever happens. So it's got my attention.
