This weekend was our second annual Chart Summit. I still can't believe all the amazing feedback that continues to come in after this event. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart, both the presenters and the audience members. I didn't think we could make something even better than the original, but I think based on the responses, we may have actually pulled it off. Wow!
Our video production folks are hard at work putting all the videos together, but I've picked out the ones I did so I can share with all of you as soon as possible. The rest will be out this week.
It's hard to ignore a sector that is breaking out to new highs, especially when it's something that it hasn't done in a long time. Biotechnology has been a laggard for years. If we've wanted to be in healthcare, it certainly has not been in Biotech or Pharma, it's been Medical Equipment stocks. But it's 2018 and times are changing.
Today we're looking at breakouts in both the Equally-weighted Biotechnology Fund $XBI and the Cap-weighted Biotechnology Fund $IBB. Because of the very different composition of the two sector funds, we want to make sure to always watch the behavior of both. The $XBI tells a better story of the sector because it is not dominated by the big names like Amgen or Gilead. But at the same time, we're not going to just throw out the fact that $AMZN is a huge component of the Discretionary space, for example. So I think it's important to always keep an eye on both the cap-weighted and equally-weighted sector indexes.
One of the most recent developments that stands out among the sector rotation that we're seeing is the strength in IT Stocks. We're seeing a breakout on the NIFTY IT Sector Index and we're seeing that IT Sector Index breaking out relative to the NIFTY500. So in other words, we're seeing massive breakouts on both an absolute and relative basis. Those are characteristics of uptrends, not downtrends.
Today we're focusing specifically on the NIFTY IT Index and how it's doing compared to the rest of the market. You can see here how the NIFTY IT Index is breaking out to new all-time highs and now holding above the former highs from 2015. If we're above that former resistance we want to be very aggressively long IT Stocks:
We are getting the breakouts we've been looking for in the IT Sector. We're not just seeing it in the sector itself, the breakout is coming on a relative basis as well. The IT Sector has been a terrible underperformer the last several years. In fact, it peaked relative to the rest of the market in 2014, over a year before it peaked on an absolute basis. It's 2018 and things are different.
Today we're taking a look at the IT Stocks in India and which ones we need to be buying.
Biotechnology has not been something you've been hearing me pound the table about for a long time. I was a huge Biotech bull in 2015, but this has not been something we've wanted to be involved with much since. The biggest reason is for the dramatic under-performance. The winning areas have been in Technology, Industrials and Financials, not Biotechnology. If we've wanted to be in healthcare at all it's been in the Medical Device and Equipment stocks, not Pharma or Biotech.
It's 2018 now and things are changing; sectors are rotating. We're seeing strength in Energy, Materials and really just Natural Resources in general. Canada and Australia breaking out finally points to strength in that area as well.
Today we're going to talk specifically about Biotechnology and if/where we want to be involved.
This weekend I hosted the 2nd annual Chart Summit, a virtual technical analysis conference that is free for everyone and anyone to attend. It all started a year ago when I got a bunch of really smart friends together on a Saturday to share their process with the world and their thoughts on the current market environment. It was such a success that we may have accidentally created the greatest Technical Analysis Conference of all time, and it was FREE. You can still watch the videos of those presentations on the original Chart Summit 2017 page.
Our presenters this year didn't skip a beat. They took it right from where we left off last year and killed it in Chart Summit 2018. I know I personally learned a lot, and based on the emails and comments that seems like a pretty universal feeling among the audience. We had fun and we got different perspectives about market behavior from a variety of approaches. That's what it was about. I was blown away by some of the presentations. It was awesome!
Register here for our live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts India.
January's Strategy Session will be held on Tuesday, February 2nd at 7 PM IST. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with all of our past conference calls.
If you look through all of the commodities on the Multi Commodity Exchange of India I think you'll find more opportunities today than at any point in the past year. I'm finding the best risk vs reward propositions in the metals and energy space specifically, not just in India but all over the world.
Today we're taking a look at Gold specifically because I think it offers one of the best risk vs reward propositions on the entire exchange:
Life is not just about stocks! There are plenty of opportunities in the commodities market and I think today is no different. In fact, we're seeing more ways of making money on the commodities exchange in this current market environment than we have throughout the past year.
Today we're diving into the MCX to isolate only the best risk vs reward opportunities. These will all be added to the Chartbook in the coming days/weeks. Here are my notes and trade ideas for now:
One of the things that often gets underrated is the power of simplicity. What's wrong with only looking at price and focusing in only on what matters most? I get that you love your moving averages and candlesticks and all sorts of momentum indicators. But the most important indicator is still price. So that's what we're going to look at today using OHLC Bar Charts.
I get asked all the time, "JC why should I care what's happening in Finland or Canada if I'm just trying to make money in stocks here in India?"
This is certainly a valid question and one that I think we need to address here before moving any further. Let's remember that this is a "market of stocks" and not just a "stock market". In other words, while things like the NIFTY50 and the S&P500 are indexes and a good gauge for the health of the overall market, there are many individual components that make up these averages. Oftentimes, that gets lost in the shuffle.
When you rip through 5000 charts a week you start to notice a few things. One thing that has caught my attention recently is the fact that there stocks just now breaking out of 20 year bases. These aren't some irrelevant micro-cap companies either, these are stocks that are literally representing some of the most important industries in America. It's hard to ignore these developments and I think it points to further strength in the U.S. Stock Market this year.
Stocks aren't breaking down from major tops. We saw so much of that happening throughout 2007 that it became almost impossible not to be short equities in 2008. Today we are still seeing the exact opposite: breakouts from major bases, multi-decade bases in some cases. Today I'm going to point out 3 very important stocks that are just now coming out of historic consolidations.
