The smartest people I know consume the most content by reading books and listening to podcasts. That's just what it is. The common denominator among some of the least successful people I know is that they don't read books or listen to podcasts. They choose to spend that time watching the news. They read newspapers, magazines and things written by journalists, instead of actual professionals. I want to know what market participants are doing. I don't want some 26 year old with no investing experience deciding what is or isn't important to me. Let me hear it straight from the horse's mouth. That's why I like reading books and listening to podcasts produced by the actual market professionals themselves!
As much as I enjoy listening to the great podcasts that are already out there, like Barry's Masters in Business and Patrick's Investors Field Guide, us Technicians don't have one of our own. I think it's about time we change that....
It's important to not only have a broader perspective on the market, but to look underneath the surface to see what is actually taking place. Precious Metals haven't exactly been my favorite asset class lately. It's for good reason too. There have been so many better places to be. It's not even close.
So today we ask the question: Is it time to be buying precious metals?
My Gold workbook has 100 charts in it. You can find the entire thing regularly updated here.
This week I invited everyone to a free webinar where I walked through my process to find only the most favorable risk vs reward opportunities. The point of this exercise was not just to make a list of hot stocks. Our purpose here is to do the homework, create the framework for the current market environment, and then decide how to best take advantage of the most important themes. This process and idea generation is a weekly thing for me and includes stocks, commodities, currencies and interest rate markets all over the world.
We had a great showing at the live webinar with representatives from all over the world. It's amazing how much interest there is globally for technical analysis. It's a beautiful thing to see.
You guys know how much I like my intermarket analysis. It's a tool that we have as market participants that simply cannot be ignored. If you're putting together a portfolio for a client, managing your own account or just looking for major trends, comparing asset classes to one another really shows where money is flowing and where it is flowing from. It would be irresponsible of us to ignore these intermarket relationships if we're trying to make money in the market and manage risk responsibly along the way.
Today, we're taking a look at one of the most important developments across the globe. We're comparing the U.S. Stock Market and the U.S. Treasury Bond Market to one another. To keep things nice and simple we'll use the most liquid exchange traded funds that represent each market: $SPY and $TLT. As you can see here, in November last year, Stocks broke out of a 9+ year base to new all-time highs. The important thing we want to reiterate here is that the breakout has held relentlessly, consolidated for half a year, and now the path of least resistance appears to be higher:
We're in the middle of Summer and markets are quiet, almost too quiet. It's easy to overthink things this time of the year and get lost in noise that is mostly made up to fill space. There isn't much going on right now for market participants, so it can only be worse for people whose job it is to report on it. Headlines that would normally fall to the bottom of the stack rise towards the top, just out of sheer necessity. The problem is they don't differentiate between what is important and what is just relatively important today because there's nothing else going on. That irresponsible behavior suggests to me that it is best to tune it all out completely. It's not worth it.
Have you heard that story yet about how Amazon is destroying traditional retailers?
Let me ask you: Is this actually the case? Is this it for retailers? It's over?
Fortunately we have actual data that can help us answer this question. We're not making guesses based on estimates that will be revised multiple times over the next few quarters. As Technicians we know what is actually taking place between the buyers and sellers for these stocks. It's up to us to make the correct interpretations, of course, but that price data is the only reliable data in existence when it comes to retail stocks.
This is the infamous chart of the S&P Retail Index, which is equally weighted. So remember that in this index, Amazon does not represent a large percentage of the overall weighting. Each retail stock, about 94 of them, are weighted approximately the same across the board.
Have you heard that story yet about how Amazon is destroying traditional retailers?
Let me ask you: Is this actually the case? Is this it for retailers? It's over?
Fortunately we have actual data that can help us answer this question. We're not making guesses based on estimates that will be revised 20 times over the next few quarters. As Technicians we know what is actually taking place between the buyers and sellers for these stocks. It's up to us to make the correct interpretations, of course, but that price data is the only reliable data in existence when it comes to retail stocks.
This is the infamous chart of the S&P Retail Index, which is equally weighted. So in this chart, Amazon does not represent a large percentage of the index. Each retail stock, about 94 of them, are weighted approximately the same across the board.
These are the registration details for our live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts India.
This month’s Conference Call will be held on Tuesday, July 20th at 7 PM IST. 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 our launch.
Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.
We've been bullish towards US and Global Stocks once again since May. I still think this is an environment where we need to be buying weakness in stocks, not selling strength. The weight of the evidence is still pointing to an increased amount of risk appetite, not risk aversion. What we're seeing in the bond market, however, is suggesting interest rates are still heading higher. The implications here for assets like Gold, Silver, Crude Oil and the US Dollar is also important to recognize.
I'll do my best to lay out my weight of the evidence conclusions and walk you step by step with how I got there! This month's Conference Call will be held on Wednesday July 19th at 7PM ET. Here are the Registration Details:
Chemical stocks are breaking out to all-time highs. It's not just one or two of them either, they are doing this collectively as a unit. When we see broad-based participation out of a group, it's not something we want to ignore. Today I want to smooth things out and look at this group from an Equally-weighted basis. While monster stocks like Dow Chemical and Du Pont break out to new all-time highs, the question we want to ask is whether or not it's just them or are the rest of them joining along?
