The year 2016 is now in the books. As market participants, it is our job to prepare for the coming quarter. We don't care much for year end targets. Those are just a marketing gimmick for wall street sell side firms. The media irresponsibly parades these historically wrong sell side analysts around on the tv and radio and have all sorts of gimmicky specials. We don't have time for that. We're here to make money in the market. So rather than making a list of the "Top 10" this or that, or blatantly making up a number to put as an S&P500 target for a year from now, I thought it would add value to walk you through my entire process as I prepare for the first quarter of 2017.
I like buying stocks that are going up. If there is anything that the market has taught us over the past hundred years is that market prices trend. The major averages, individual sectors, stocks, commodities, currencies, interest rates, they all trend. Sometimes these are uptrends that last years or even decades, sometimes they're downtrends, and sometimes there is no trend and it's just a sideways mess. Remember, recognizing a lack of trend is just as important as the first two. What I like even more is while a stock is going up the sell side likes it less and less. It's completely counter intuitive to us who specifically look for trends to follow. They don't think like us as market participants because they have different motivations.
I've been a full time technician for well over a decade. During this time, I've been lucky enough to meet and become close friends with some of the best and brightest technicians in the world. I regularly discuss the markets with them over email as well as the various conferences and speaking engagements that we all attend. We have spirited debates over what the market is going to do next, who has the better process for identifying opportunities and who nailed or missed the most recent big move. Without fail, I learn something new every time I have these types of discussions. So it got me thinking, and I realized that other traders and investors around the world would love to be a fly on the wall for these conversations and learn some new things too. It's been my goal for the past year to make this a reality, and that day has finally come.
I love technical analysis. I really do. There's no question that finding a nice chart brings a great amount of joy to my life. Today I want to share with you what I think is one of the most important developments to occur over the past couple of months. Interest rates have been ripping higher, yes we know this. But to me it's what is happening in Banks and Real Estate Investment Trusts that continues to grab my attention. These groups of stocks are doing the exact opposite today that they were doing at the beginning of 2016, when I was pounding the table about rates going a lot lower.
Interest rates have exploded higher into year-end from a low near 1.37% on the 10-year yield up to over 2.6%. But one of the big reasons that had me so bullish rates since July was that while the 10-year was making lower lows into the summer, the ratio between Regional Banks and REITs held the early 2015 low and started to rally:
One of the more impressive moves that we've seen in 2016 is in the Industrial space. While we came into the year near multi-year lows on a relative basis (XLI/SPY), we entered December hitting new all-time highs relative to the S&P500. You want to talk about a dramatic change in relative strength? This is something we take very seriously, and definitely not something to ignore. We also want to keep in mind is that this relative strength started well before any election, US or otherwise. This got going in January.
Today we're taking a look at the largest component in the Industrial sector: General Electric $GE, a stock that broke out earlier this year above a downtrend line from the all-time highs in 2000 and is still 30% below the 2007 highs. I think this is where we want to be looking:
Most of us are here to try and make money in the market. Some others are just here to make noise and create content they think will help them drive traffic to sell ads. The importance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting 20,000 is one of the biggest lies of the year. I'm lucky to be good friends with some of the smartest traders and analysts in the world. We email each other all the time privately to share ideas and discuss some of the things we're seeing out there. If there is something worth watching, I'm likely to get an email about it, or at least be included in an email discussion on the topic. So far, zero mention of this arbitrary 20,000 level, but double digit emails from media asking me what I think. See the difference?
Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts 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. Transportation stocks have been a huge winner for us and we'll be discussing the sectors and assets that I think can behave in a similar manner in the coming weeks and months.
This month's Conference Call will be held on Wednesday December 14, 2016 at 7PM ET. Here are the Registration Details:
For someone who uses Dow Theory every single day, it's not something that I write about much. I may indirectly reference certain tenets all the time, but rarely do I write specifically about the 130 year old Dow Theory. I think I pretty much laid it all out earlier this year in my post: 5 Things Every Investor Should Know About Dow Theory. The simple minded choose to stick to the Dow Jones Transportation Average and Dow Jones Industrial Average either confirming each other or diverging from one another. And while this may in fact be a one of Charles Dow's tenets (although they were Railroads back then, not the Transports we have today), it does not even make it into my top 5 most important tenets.
I could not be happier to see this rally in stocks all over the world. The Transportation stocks in particular have been especially impressive (See here: Transports 8/24/16). But I want to point to some of the rotation we've started to see in other asset classes since last week.
