With that being said, today's focus is on one sector and its largest component, both of which look vulnerable to further downside.
Let's take a look.
One of the tools we use for Indian stocks due to how top-heavy the market is are chart overlays of a sector/index's largest component and the underlying sector/index. The largest component in most cases can represent a major portion of an index and act as either a helium balloon or lead balloon, pulling the index up or down on a whim. When their performance diverges, that's when we want to pay attention.
Over the last few months, we've seen a divergence in the performance of Vedanta Ltd. which represents 19% of the Nifty Metal Index. Vedanta is making lower highs as the sector makes higher highs, suggesting that potential weakness could be ahead the group as a whole.
Annie Duke is the author of one of my favorite books, "Thinking In Bets". I often find myself recommending it to both colleagues and friends and family who aren't even in our business. While the book might be written by a poker player, and is somewhat about poker, it's really about the way we think, and this applies to market participation, but also life in general. It's a book I believe everyone should read, at least once.
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I discuss the less talked about tenets of Dow Theory. Everyone always likes to talk about the Dow Jones Industrial Average either confirming or diverging from the Dow Jones Transportation Average. But what gets forgotten is that there are many more tenets like Closing Prices are the most important, Identifying the direction of the Primary Trends and The Market Discounting Everything. Check out JC's 5 Most Important Dow Theory Tenets
This day and age we have other areas just as important, or even more important, than a group of Railroads, like what Charlie had when he first wrote down his Tenets in the late 1800s. Today we also compare the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the Semiconductor and Homebuilders Indexes as well as incorporate a series of ratios with Consumer Staples and Financials. It's more of an "and" than an "or" for us when it comes to Dow Theory.
Believe it or not, there isn't a bull market EVERYwhere. Of course, if you give yourself a steady diet of SHOUT!TV! then this is not a surprise to you because everything is bearish (on TV).
As we begin the last leg of 2019 into the holidays, trading often gets a little uneventful (last year being a MAJOR exception). Feels to me a great time to be putting some delta-neutral income trades on.
Healthcare is the latest of the American Sectors to break out to new all-time highs. I think Financials are next, but for today's conversation, let's focus on the task at hand: Healthcare is a space we want to own.
First of all, here is that breakout. It rarely gets cleaner than this:
Click on Charts to Zoom In
Another 35% of upside in this sector would be consistent with historical moves in the past and would be perfectly normal, as far as I'm concerned.
The bigger question, really, is which industry group is going to be the main driver?
The obvious choice appears to be Medical Devices. When all these stocks and sectors were churning sideways since early 2018, the relative strength was already here. You can't deny that. Look at this beauty:
Did you notice that the U.S. Financials Sector Index is just 3.5% away from its infamous all-time highs in 2007 before the financial crisis?
That's right, $XLF is approaching this level once again, for the 3rd time in almost 13 years. Is this finally going to be it? Are we really going to start a new bull market in Financials?
I think yes and I'm going to tell you why.
First here is the chart I'm referring to and its 3rd attempt to get through this level:
You can also watch this entire video for just $1 by clicking this link. In this short clip below, I show you 3 specific points throughout the presentation where
1) I discuss risk management techniques and how we will know soon if we're wrong on our thesis,
2) a specific ratio that is a coincident and, often times, a leading indicator for US Stocks, and
3) how we identify specific trade ideas using the top/down approach, with 2 ideas in particular that we want to take advantage of today.
Our conclusion then was to be avoiding the sector on the long side and that its weakness was a drag on the broader market given its 10% weighting in the Nifty 500.
Today, not much has changed, in fact, it's arguably getting worse.
If you look at a list of the best-performing stock markets in the world this year and over the last few, you'll see New Zealand towards the top of that list in both local currency and US Dollar terms.
With that said, today's Chart of The Week is focused on another New Zealand chart that's NOT equities.
Don't worry, we'll talk equities too for you non-currency traders.
I'm not saying I'm bullish on Disney because my family recently signed up to send them money every month for Disney+, but it certainly has me thinking about the tremendous new source of cashflow to be streaming into their coffers. That's got to be bullish, right?
Of course, at All Star Charts, all we ever follow around here is price so none of the above really matters, it just makes a nice story. But lo and behold, the $DIS chart sure is setting up for a continuation of what already is a pretty significant run:
