Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.
By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.
Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:
* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.
In an effort to fight inflation, the Fed is likely to accept volatility but will be wary of stress.
Equity market trends are deteriorating.
Preserve capital and sanity - market doesn’t hand out participation medals.
Offsetting this likely need for more aggressive tightening is the potential for sanctions to strain the financial system in unexpected ways. When liquidity gets disrupted signs of stress can emerge. A widening in high yield spreads and/or a breakdown in the ratio between high yield bond and Treasury ETFs would be evidence that volatility is morphing into stress. That could slow the pace at which the Fed tightens and in the process worsen the problem of inflation.
Since last week's report, war has broken out between Ukraine and Russia.
This has been the dominant driver of recent price action in risk assets, Bitcoin and crypto included.
We're still positioned heavily in cash, with little crypto exposure.
Particularly with the geopolitical volatility we've seen over the last week and the resulting impact on global markets, this remains an aggressive tape to be actively trading.
Sitting out remains the most prudent option for the vast majority of traders.
It's hard to ignore the fact that some of the worst stocks on the planet are near old support levels.
One group that stands out for sure are the Marijuana stocks. We've seen a ton of activity from C-suite executives buying their own company's stocks recently. And not just exercising options, but going out in the open market and buying the stock just like you or I would.
Look at the Alternative Harvest Index Fund all the way down to those former lows from early 2020:
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This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday March 1st @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.
We've been joking internally that the new highs list is a lot longer when you include ADRs.
As US stocks come under increasing pressure and the rotation into value becomes more pronounced, international stocks are garnering some well-deserved attention.
We also have a bi-weekly scan where we focus exclusively on the largest ADRs, which are just foreign companies listed on US exchanges. It's called the International Hall of Famers, and you can check it out here.
The only problem with it is that a lot of the cyclical stocks that are showing leadership have smaller market capitalizations, and our universe is focused only on large caps.
As such, we thought we'd run a scan to identify some of the strongest international stocks between a market cap of $1B and $35B.
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.
These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.
It has all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that, which you can check out here.
The Hall of Famers is simple.
We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.
It was certainly a busy week filled with volatility-inducing headlines that produced sharp sell-offs and stunning reversals. And all in just four trading days. Stepping back from the noise, it can be helpful to take stock of what has changed and what has not. One of the things that has not changed, is that on the NASDAQ new lows continue to outnumber new highs. It is true that there were fewer new lows on Thursday than there were at the January low. But for evidence of sustainable improvement, we don’t just want to see fewer new lows, but actually see more new highs than new lows. It has been 35 trading days since that has happened, the longest such stretch since late 2018/ early 2019 (and the second longest stretch since the financial crisis more than a decade ago). When this changes (and at some point it will) we can think about the NASDAQ from a more constructive perspective. Until then, it might be best to remember that the best rallies tend to occur within bear markets and those are best observed from the sidelines.