Some people look at Utility stocks doing well as something negative. I never understood that. They suggest that an uptrend in a sector that is looked upon as "defensive" is not something characteristic of a stock market that is going up. But, in fact, it is. With Utilities pressing against all-time highs again, now is as good of a time as any to remind ourselves that they indeed move with the overall stock market over time.
In 2018 the trend of small-cap Healthcare out-performance over its large-cap counterparts accelerated aggressively, with the small-cap ETF $PSCH returning 30.50% YTD and the large-cap ETF $XLV up a meager 1.70%.
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Despite XLV's under-performance relative to small-caps and the broader market, some signs of improvement have been developing over the last few weeks. As we can see in the ratio of $XLV / $SPY below, prices retested their 2017 lows as momentum diverged positively. This suggests at the very least we don't want to be short on a relative basis.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Square $SQ and a little-known company named Twitter $TWTR, is having a pretty good year. How good? Well, in the last 365 days, $SQ is up 177% and Twitter is up a more modest 158%. Boy, the sentiment in these two names sure has changed. It seemed like just yesterday Jack Dorsey was America's most hated CEO. "Pick one!" the masses screamed. Everyone thought he had taken on too big of a workload as the stocks of both companies languished in prolonged downtrends. Amazing what twin upward trending stock prices can do for Public Relations.
While both stocks look compelling here, we're going to take advantage of some attractive volatility being priced into $SQ options and an earnings event to play both sides against.
For months we've been focusing our long efforts on stocks in sectors like Fast Moving Consumer Goods that have been showing relative strength. Today we're revisiting the Consumer Goods sector as it makes new all-time highs on an absolute basis and nearly 1-year highs relative to the Nifty 500 to see what names we want to be involved in to capitalize on this theme.
Click on chart to enlarge view.
Here is a look at the Nifty Fast Moving Consumer Goods Index on an absolute basis, showing prices marching toward our price target of 30,710 after two months of consolidation.
I just got back from a vacation in the south of France and northern Italy. I've written in the past about the benefits of getting away and the positive impact it can have on decision making and portfolio returns. If you have the discipline to stay away from your computer during a staycation, that works too. I personally cannot help myself but to go check out some charts if I know I have access to the computer. So I need to get out of town. This year we chose Europe.
Ever since first studying Fibonacci in 2005, I knew his statue was somewhere in Pisa. The trouble was finding it. There isn't much information out there. Some of you have been asking me about this for your upcoming trip to Italy or just keeping note of it for the future. So I figured it would help to just lay it out there as a reference for when you need it.
This is Part 2 of the 3rd Quarter Playbook for Members of Allstarcharts.com and focuses more on the Global Macro and Intermarket composition of the current environment. For more US Sector and Stock specific analysis, see Part 1.
Now that we're halfway through the year, it seems like an appropriate time to review market breadth both globally and within India to identify how we want to be positioned in equities during the second half of this year. In this post we'll do just that by looking at all of the global equity markets and Nifty sectors we track to determine their trend and momentum readings across multiple timeframes, so that we can come to a conclusion based upon the weight of the evidence.
With two weeks to July expiration, it's time to review our July positions that will be expiring soon and take any actions that are necessary to reduce risk or take profits. This is the time of the cycle when the theta cost of our long premium plays will start to accelerate against us, or the gamma risk in our short premium plays will start to ramp quickly against us. No bueno in either case.
Throughout April and May we've discussed market breadth improvements that have us bullish on equity prices both in the US and globally. Today I want to perform a simple exercise to see how the data we're looking at has developed over the last two months or so of trading.
With earnings for Apple coming up on July 31, there's just enough time, worthwhile juice, and a significant price level to lean against in order to potentially bite off some quick profits in $AAPL while limiting our downside risk. Since we don't have much time, lets cut right to the chase...
The running metaphors for Nike $NKE stock are too obvious, so I'll do my best to avoid them. However, it cannot be denied that last week's monster gap higher coming out of earnings has launched the stock around the final turn and it is now sprinting towards a big, fat, round number - $100. That big magnet coupled with a pretty common phenomenon called "post earnings drift" following positively received earnings events sets up a pretty compelling case for a profitable move setting up.
