In today's post, we're talking about a group of stocks that have emerged as the 'Generals' of the current bull market.
You are thinking, “it must be tech.”
It’s not.
Industrials have been just as strong as tech stocks but with far better internals. No other sector has experienced the kind of broad participation we’re seeing from industrials. These are the real market leaders.
Historically, the Industrial sector is the one with the highest correlation to the overall market. So, the strength of these stocks is also sending us very bullish information about the health of this bull market.
This is great news, but today’s note is about looking under the hood and finding the best opportunities in the various industrial subgroups.
As one of the most diverse sectors, investors have plenty of options in the world of industrials. We did the work and dug into this space to find out what the strongest areas are and where we want to put our money.
Let’s get into it.
Here’s the Large-Cap Industrial Sector $XLI breaking out of a multi-year base:
Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 1, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.
What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.
We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.
There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.
Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.
Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options...
This morning, my Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza joined me on The Flow Show to put our heads together on a new trade:
Strazza loves the Energy sector here, and of all the charts he likes, I liked this one in Valero Energy $VLO the best:
Best of all, options premiums are near the lowest levels of the year for $VLO:
This isn't entirely surprising. The stock has been consolidating just below all-time highs since early 2022. And the consolidation has been continually tightening.
Sideways markets may not stop you out of your positions, but they are likely to wear you out. And when traders are exiting their positions giving up on the thought of any directional movement, options premiums tend to decline because few participants feel the need to protect their positions or aggressively bet on accelerating...
They’re a hearty bunch full of true grit, choosing to focus on the silver lining while persevering through countless downturns.
Gold, on the other hand, has been an easy target…
Every time buyers have managed to drive the price back to the 2,089 level…
Rejected!
Sellers have stepped in, capping price while breaking the hearts of gold bugs everywhere.
Or so I thought. It turns out you can’t break a gold bug’s heart.
Try as they might, sellers are no match for gold bugs’ bullish conviction.
Buyers rushed in, driving price higher following last month’s breakdown:
I’ll admit, I didn’t see this week’s retest and possible breakout coming.
The market simply wore me down. I guess I’m not what you might consider a true gold bug.
You can call me weak if you like. But that won’t stop me from buying gold futures on a decisive daily close above 2,100 with a target of approximately 2,500.
And it shouldn’t stop you, either.
Gold mining stocks will also spring back to life if gold...