I have to give credit to our Intermarket Analysis work for a lot of our success over the years. This “Cross-Asset” perspective is incredibly valuable, particularly when it comes to identifying and staying with important trends. As a supplement to our Technical work in U.S. Stocks and Indexes, we incorporate a variety of Intermarket relationships to help us formulate a thesis. These include Bonds, Commodities and Currencies.
When it comes to safety, I don’t care what people believe is a safe haven, I only care how the market reacts when it needs to go safe. When markets stressed and volatility rises, stocks fall in price and US Treasury Bonds and Japanese Yen reap the benefits. When did Yen and Bonds get strong? Summer of 2015 just as the S&P500 was topping out. When did Yen and Bonds peak? When stocks got going several months before the 2016 elections. Both of these are near their 52-week lows, which makes perfect sense with Stocks at all-time highs.
So, the way I see it, we’re most likely going to see Yen and Bond strength if stocks really sell off this quarter. The other side of that argument is that stocks are likely to do well in an environment where these “safe haven” assets are selling off. Here is a chart of both U.S. Treasury Bonds and Japanese Yen close to major breakdowns. If this is indeed the case, and both of these assets do break, I would bet that stocks are ripping in that environment: [Read more…]