This morning I was on the Benzinga pre-market radio show, where I am invited to come on as a guest every other week. So basically twice a month a rap with the boys about the direction of the Stock Market, both U.S. and globally, Interest Rates & Bonds, and more recently the agricultural commodities.
We've been pretty neutral the majority of the U.S. Stock Market indexes over the past couple of weeks since they first starting hitting our upside targets. Some of them, like the Nasdaq100 and Mid-cap400 had yet to reach out upside objectives, but we are approaching those now. I will argue, though, that the developments we've seen are constructive, both in price behavior and in the breadth itself.
Here is what I think we need to keep in mind with each of the major Indexes. We're using only bar charts today in order to put extra emphasis on price for this particular exercise:
From late January until today, there have been tactical breakouts in currencies of countries with significant commodity exposure relative to the US Dollar. This has provided a tailwind to a number of emerging market equities that have subsequently followed through to the upside. Many of these equity markets are concentrated in Latin America, but areas like South Africa, Africa, Australia, and Turkey have benefited as well.
Whether or not these tactical moves will continue and develop into long-term trends is entirely unknown, but the risk/reward in the US Dollar/Brazilian Real looks particularly skewed in favor of the bears here.
Over the past few days I've received a number of requests from members asking me to post a the updated charts on my favorite U.S .Stock Market short right now. In last week's letter I mentioned how Utilities were not a place we wanted to be long and there were a few ways to take advantage of the individual components of the sector.
Today I want to dive into those individual charts:
Over the past few weeks there have been some interesting developments in Agriculture commodities, and Soybean Oil is no exception.
Before we get into the price action, I think it's worth noting that we're in the middle of a seasonally strong period for Soybeans, while hedger positioning and public sentiment are coming off multi-year extremes. These should both continue to provide a tailwind for prices of Soybean related markets in the weeks and months ahead.
I look at a few hundred charts per day across multiple timeframes, and thousands each weekend, but I very rarely find an idea that's actionable at that particular moment. This begs the question of why I look at so many charts if they rarely lead to actually putting on a trade, to which the answer brings us to the title of this post.
When utilizing a top-down approach to technical analysis, every liquid global asset class provides some type of information that's useful, even if you don't trade that asset class directly. Instead, each new piece of data adds to the pool of information that we as market participants use to make decisions. When the weight of evidence suggests a more probable outcome, that is when it's appropriate to put on a trade that expresses that theme or thesis in the most capital-efficient way possible.
For long time readers of All Star Charts, you guys pretty much know my deal. I put in more work that most people and I include markets in my studies that the majority of investors choose to ignore. In order to take a weight-of-the-evidence approach to the market, I need to, in fact, weigh all of the evidence. Therefore, I have to look at every single stock market in the world on both short-term and long-term time frames.
This Thursday March 24th, I will be presenting at an all day live webinar presented by Investor Inspiration. I will be joining six additional speakers and my time slot begins at 1:45PM ET.
During my session, we will be discussing some of the basic technical analysis principles that I incorporate in my work every day. These include Supply & Demand analysis, Momentum, Fibonacci, Correlations and how to use Moving Averages for trend identification.
Back in November of last year, I decided to start writing an “Open Letter About the Current Market Environment” and posting it on my blog. This was just a summary of what I call my “homework” (flipping through hundreds of charts every day to find the best risk/reward setups). I was already doing the work so I thought why not share it with my followers and see if it resonated with them.
As you know, I'm a firm believer in listening to the markets when they speak. And in the case of my open letter, the "market" definitely spoke. My inbox was literally flooded with emails thanking me for the insightful trades included in my letters and asking when the next one would be posted. At that moment, I knew I was on to something BIG.
It's been awfully lonely being a China bull over the past couple of months. All I keep hearing is how China is falling apart and slowing and all sorts of negative sentiment towards the country and its stock market. In the real world, however, where we are forced to live and where only price pays, we've seen emerging markets dominating for 2 months and I think the squeeze higher we've seen in China is just getting started.
First, here is a chart of the Shanghai Composite breaking below last August's lows to start the new year. After a couple of months down there, we are now back above those former lows confirming a failed breakdown. I think this is the catalyst to continue to send Chinese stocks soaring:
