One of the topics I spoke about during my Chart Summit presentation on breadth last month was the relative performance of Equally-Weighted versus Cap-Weighted Indexes.
I always hear that the market cannot go higher on an absolute basis if the Equally-Weighted S&P 500 is underperforming the Cap-Weighted.
It's been about three weeks since I wrote this post looking at breadth across various Equity markets since January 2018.
JC wrote a post today about "The Cards We've Been Dealt" which references some of these stats, so I wanted to update some of them and highlight another way we use them to measure breadth.
We have to play the cards we're dealt. Like it or not, this is the environment we're forced to invest in, but only if you want to. You don't have to invest. Cash has been a viable option for 6 months. It's worked out great. Most stocks, sectors, US and International Indexes are still below their January 2018 highs. I can give you the exact numbers like we provide for our Institutional Customers, but just take my word for it. It's not even close. We've been in a 14-month sideways range, or downtrend, depending on who you ask. Either way, it's not an uptrend for most stocks.
Now, this 14-month nothing burger comes within the context of a major bull market in stocks, that arguably started in 2016. After a monster run throughout 2016 and 2017, the stock market, both U.S. and abroad, has consolidated those gains. It seems perfectly normal, and well deserved, if you ask me.
Due to a scheduling conflict around the annual CMT Symposium in New York, JC and I will be doing our monthly conference call a little later in the cycle this month. But have no worries, I'll provide some updates below on positions we have open with April options that may need some attention or adjustments.
We've been erring on the long side of stocks for the last 6 weeks, taking trades where the reward/risk is heavily skewed in our favor, but are still seeing mixed evidence regarding the market's ability to make new highs in the short-term.
I received a ton of great responses via Twitter and email for this week's Mystery Chart, so thank you for that.
Most said you'd be buying the breakout at current levels or on a successful retest, but a few skeptics were staying away. Let's get into the actual chart.
The Equally-Weighted Semiconductor Index recently made new all-time highs, while the cap-weighted sits a few below its 2018 highs. What's next for Semis? That's what I hope to answer in this post.
Palladium. For the last 3 years, nobody cared a lick as it nearly quadrupled in price. Over the last month however, I'd seen more mentions* as the price trend accelerated than I did for the entire 3-year trend beforehand.
For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and eliminate the x and y-axes and and all labels eliminated to minimize bias. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. It can even be inverted or a custom index.
The point here is to not guess what it is, but instead to think about what you would do right now.Buy,Sell, or Do Nothing?
I don't often take long premium plays ahead of an earnings event, but there's one coming on the horizon where the options pricing isn't too high (yet) and the All Star Charts team has a price target that would yield us a greater than 4-to-1 return on risk if the earnings catalyst plays out in our favor.
Everyone these days is talking about yield curves inverting. It's the topic du jour, similar to things like golden crosses and 200 day moving averages. The difference is that this one is more intermarket oriented. "Well if this happens to bonds and that happens to rates, then this historically happens to stocks, or the economy". Observing the behavior of one asset class to help make decisions on another is called Intermarket Analysis, or "Cross-Asset" in some more institutional circles.
I don't think there is much more for me to say at this point about the yield curve. The crew over at The Chart Report pretty much covered it all beautifully last week. The short end of the curve (10-year minus 3-month) turned negative, but the long end of the curve did not. The 10s-30s spread is steepening and controlled by free markets vs the fed controlled short end. We've seen this happen before, like in the 90s for example, without it sparking bear markets.
