JC’s Chartbook

Monthly Charts

The most valuable 30 minutes of my entire month is updating my list of monthly candlestick charts. There is no doubt in my mind. It is easy to get caught up in the day to day drama that they call the market, but this group of charts keeps us honest about the direction of the underlying trend. At the end of each month (and only at the end), do we look at the completed candlestick chart of all of the major Stock Market Indexes, Sectors and Stocks. We also include many important commodities and currencies in this list like Gold, Oil and EURUSD. When you spend 30 minutes each month (that is 12 times per year = 6 hours per year), you will quickly see how important it is do go through this process and how irresponsible it would be not to.

International Indexes

The US Stock Market does not go up or down because of what happens in the United States. US Stocks and Stocks all over the world tend to move in unison, to a certain extent. No matter where you live in the world, I think it’s important to constantly be evaluating the entire list of stock market indexes from every country on the planet. That’s what this workbook is for. It is personally one of my favorite workbooks of the list. Few workbooks on this list offer as much insight as to what is actually happening in the market than this list. You will find everything from London, Brazil and China to South Africa, India, Poland and Germany.

Hall Of Famers

The Hall Of Famers list contains all the largest stocks in the US based on market capitalization.

International Hall Of Famers

The International Hall Of Famers list contains all the largest international stocks (or ADRs) that are listed on major US exchanges, based on market capitalization. We’ve also included many of the largest individual stocks from each country.

Currencies

This workbook is specifically for all of the most important currency crosses in the world. Here you will find the ones in the US Dollar Index – Yen, Euro, Pound, Aussie, Canadian Dollar and Swiss Franc. In this workbook we also include a lot of these crosses against each other like Euro/Yen and Euro/Pound. Many of the important emerging market currencies like Brazilian Real and Indian Rupee are in this group of charts.

Bonds

The Bond workbook covers the largest markets in the world. It includes major US interest rates, their corresponding futures contracts and ETFs, as well as crucial US yield spreads and inflation expectations. It also contains numerous intermarket ratios as well as developed and emerging market bond ETFs to capture the broad scope of global credit markets.

Commodities

The commodities workbook includes all of the Energy Futures, Precious Metals, Base Metals and Agricultural commodities. Here you will find Crude Oil, Gold, Silver, Corn, Soybeans, Lumber and Copper. The fact that we use multiple timeframes to get both longer-term perspective as well as a more short-term outlook gives us great opportunities on both the long and short side. It is great for diversification and uncorrelated positions. The unique advantages of the futures market also makes this group of charts very attractive from a risk vs reward proposition.

Commodities (Monthly)

Intermarket Analysis

This workbook is designed to keep together all of the most important intermarket relationships all over the world. The ratio charts included here compare asset classes, country stock markets and a variety of different sectors to one another. Here you will find anything from the Stocks vs Gold Ratio, to Consumer Discretionary vs Consumer Staples, Large-cap vs Small-cap, Growth vs Value and High Beta vs Low Volatility. We use this workbook to get a better idea of where money is flowing. By keeping this workbook up to date, we know in which assets or sectors the strength lies and where the weakness might be. It is great for asset allocation, portfolio management and overall gathering of the weight-of-the-evidence.

US Sectors & Industry Groups

The Sectors Workbook is designed to go through all of the different industries throughout the stock market for a variety of reasons. First, in order to get a weight-of-the-evidence view of the market, you actually need to weigh all of that evidence. Going through every single sector lets you do that. This includes Financials, Energy, Biotechnology, Railroads and even sub-industry groups like Medical Device stocks or Casino & Gaming. From a relative strength standpoint, this workbook really helps us see where the strength is and which areas are weaker.

Market Breadth

We do an extensive amount of research when it relates to market breadth and internals. In this workbook, we publish many of our aggregate breadth indicators, including advance-decline lines, the percentage of stocks making new highs and lows, and the percentage of stocks that are overbought or oversold, among others. These indicators are calculated differently, and thus provide us with different information. Not only do we look at breadth using a variety of different measures, but we perform this analysis on a wide range of markets – from global equities, to individual sectors, and even our own custom universes. This workbook provides a great deal of information and insight as to what’s going on under the hood in these different areas.

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