We have not been in an environment where this was on the table for a long time. For those of you who know me, I think I've proven that I'm not one of these end of the world guys. We can probably all agree that I call it like I see it and have no directional bias. I walk around daily proud to not care whether the market doubles or gets cut in half. We just want to be on the right side of the trend.
The risk for most of the month has been skewed in favor of the bears. As breadth has gotten worse and momentum has confirmed downside pressure, I believe there is unlimited risk in the market right now. Nothing is out of the question.
For our subscribers I've discussed what we need to be seeing in terms of market breadth before stepping in and trading stocks in India on the long side (here, here, here, and here) and today's action suggests we may be on our way to getting that opportunity in the next week or two.
Unless you've been on an African safari during the entire month of October, you've probably noticed the dramatic shift in market tone. What has been working for the majority of the year has stopped working. The low-volatility, bullish setups playbook has been rendered ineffective in just a couple short weeks. As many of us were recently reminded, and many of you might be learning now for the first time, when market regimes change -- the process is usually swift, messy, and confusing.
If you're a long-only swing trader in this market environment, good luck. You're probably in for a wild ride.
Chicago is one of my favorite cities in the country. November 7-9th I'll be out there with the team meeting with clients and giving presentations. You're invited to join us Thursday Nov 8th at the Chicago Board of Trade for a Free event hosted by the CMT Association.
I posted this on twitter today as the latest round of dip buyers were tripping all over themselves to buy up any and all perceived bargains being offered by Mr. Market. While the cumulative bounce for the past three trading days has been impressive, I've traded through too many corrections and bear markets to be tricked this easily into thinking the storm has fully passed.
Instead, I'm welcoming bounces like this because it more easily reveals the weakest names that are struggling to rebound. The stocks that haven't bounced or are struggling in relative terms to rise with their brethren, these are the names we want to press into on the short side. They are the ones likely to lead the carnage on the next leg down.
Marijuana stocks have never been that HIGH on our list of areas to look at given their smaller market-cap, average trading volume, and short price history often inhibits larger players from participating in them, however, the strong performance as of late has drum up interest in the space and increased the number of stocks that meet our criteria to analyze them. This post will be a quick update on what we're seeing from a price perspective.
This past weekend was the 5th annual Traders4ACause Conference in Las Vegas. It was a lot of fun and a bunch of us helped raise money for a list of great causes. On Saturday I gave a presentation about what I'm currently seeing in the markets, including Stocks, Bonds and Currencies. Sunday I sat on a panel with Joe Fahmy and Paul Singh and we just chatted about the markets, what we're seeing out there and shared some stories about the things we've learned over the years. We recorded the conversation so here it is in full. I encourage everyone to check out the Traders4ACause site and donate even if you could not attend. I hope you enjoy our discussion!
This past weekend we wrote updates for our US and India subscribers, discussing stock market breadth around the globe. When I do these types of updates, we often get asked why we look at international markets both in their local currency terms AND as US-listed ETFs. Why not one or the other? In this quick post we'll walk through our thought process behind it.
We've written a lot of content on the blog about the current market environment over the last few weeks, but we want to use this post to quickly point to two broad-based breadth measures we're watching to identify when a tradeable bottom might be in.
In addition to the updates we've done about the broader market here, here, here, and here, a lot of you have been emailing us asking for more individual trade ideas. Given that we have to be a lot more selective in this environment, I'm going to use this post to outline a number of setups on the long side. The posts linked above explain why we have a long bias.
In July I looked at the trend and momentum readings of stock markets around the world and US Sectors and Sub-Sectors to identify the overall risk appetite for Equities. Today's update will perform the same exercise and compare the results to determine if breadth has improved, deteriorated, or stayed the same, as well as what the implications of these changes are.
