While everyone is making a big fuss about S&Ps making new lows, or Oil hitting new lows, or the amount of stocks in the NYSE hitting new lows, believe it or not, there are plenty of things making new highs. So although we've been bearish towards the U.S. Stock Market for months and could not be happier to see stocks continuing to sell off, today I want to focus on something that is making new highs.
This is a 20-year chart of Gold relative to the CRB index. This index is comprised of 19 Commodities including Crude Oil, Copper, Corn, Sugar, Gold etc. We consider the CRB to be the benchmark for the commodities markets
The Head and Shoulders experts are popping up everywhere these days. Never has there been a price pattern searched for or imagined in people's minds more than the infamous Head & Shoulders Pattern. Funny, as much as they love to talk about it and as much airtime as it gets on the TV and Internets, it's actually one of the more rare patterns driven by supply and demand. The reason it is so rare is because, by definition, it is a reversal pattern. Since markets trend, and ongoing trends tend to continue trending in their direction, by looking for a Head and Shoulders Pattern, you are doing the exact opposite of what we're trying to do here in the first place: recognize trends.
As a simple definition, a Head and Shoulders pattern, in this case, a Head and Shoulders Top, is made up of two higher highs (the "Left Shoulder" and the "Head"), followed by a lower high ("Right Shoulder"). After each of the prior higher highs, the ensuing sell-offs should find support near
We held a free webinar this week to show off our new ChartBook and discuss how to best invest for 2016 using intermarket analysis. At All Star Charts, we use a global top/down approach in order to take the weight-of-the-evidence in Stocks, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rates to come up with a theme. Once we have a major global theme, we will break it down to specific U.S. Sectors or Country ETFs and either buy or short individual ETFs or stocks to express our theme using strict risk management procedures
As you guys know very well, we have wanted to be short the majority of the U.S. Sectors and Sub-sectors coming into the new year. While we still have much lower downside targets from a structural perspective, tactically speaking, many of our targets were hit this week. This is where we wanted to be covering short positions and, for the most part, looking to reinitiate short positions if and when we get a corrective rally. I have just updated all of the U.S. Sectors and Sub-sectors and they can be seen in the ChartBook.
Here's a very simple shorting opportunity in a name that we all know well. This is a bear market, I've been very clear about that for months. The majority of stocks have already fallen more than 10-15% from their recent highs, and in some cases a lot more. But there are a few names that have held in there despite the major U.S. Stock Market indexes falling completely apart.
Today I want to focus on Dr Pepper Snapple $DPS, a stock that is putting in bearish momentum divergences on both weekly and daily timeframes. To me, this is a great recipe for a nice correction. If the risk vs reward is in favor of the bears
Today I want to point to a chart that a really smart friend of mine has been sending me for months. He prefers to remain nameless, you know how these sell side guys roll, so we'll just call him Mr. T. In this Chart, Mr. T has been telling me since the Fall that the Regional Banks vs REITs ratio is suggesting that U.S. Interest Rates are heading lower, specifically the U.S. 10-year yield.
On the top frame, we're looking at the Regional Bank Index ETF $KRE over the REITs Index ETF $IYR. In this case, the numerator, Regional Banks, do relatively well when the market thinks rates will rise, while the denominator, REITs, do relatively well when the market thinks that rates
When I read about the Telecom sector or speak with colleagues about it, I find many people often think of it as a collection of companies with strong balance sheets, great cash flows, and shareholder friendly actions like juicy dividends and share buybacks. While that may be true in many cases, that doesn't necessarily mean that the sector can be utilized as a bond proxy to boost a portfolio's yield. As we saw in recent years with sectors exposed to high-yield, and MLPs, there's no such thing as a free lunch. In addition to that, simple math shows that Telecom hasn't been correlated with bonds (TLT) at all over the past ten years, with the correlation being 0.29, 0.19, and 0.08 over the past one year, three years, and ten years, respectively.
If you had adopted the above philosophy, stuck this sector in your portfolio and hoped for the best, you've seen that
In all markets, there are uptrends and there are downtrends. And then, of course, there are periods where there is no trend at all and it's just a mess. Ultimately these messes find away to clean themselves up and a new beautiful trend is born. This is just the evolution of markets, that by definition trend. It's our job to try and find them early in their growth, or, on the other hand, look to benefit from the downside of an aging and changing trend.
It's the sideways markets with no trend that'll get you. This is what some of us refer to as a chopfest, and is exactly what we've seen in the 10-year note yield over the past couple of
With Natural Gas futures up roughly 48% since the December lows, the urge to call a bottom in this asset class is quite strong. However, history tells us that the most vicious rallies occur during bear markets, which may suggest that current levels offer a decent risk/reward on the short side.
Before taking a look at price, it's important to be aware of current sentiment and seasonality data within its proper historical context. In terms of sentiment, the recent rally has allowed a number of things to occur
