From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
You’re probably sick of hearing this but it’s important! Even with the recent bout of volatility, new lows have been non-existent across most of the major averages in the US.
To be fair, many of our Intermarket relationships are still flashing red, suggesting continued headwinds for risk assets.
Earlier this week we saw significant selling pressure in equity markets both domestically and abroad. Conditions are as ripe as they’ve been in more than a year for the bears.
So, did we finally get that “fall day,” as our fellow Technician and friend Mike Hurley likes to call it?
The simple answer is no...
To us, the recent readings from our breadth indicators are no different from similar pullbacks over the past 18 months and not what a significant market top would look like.
But we always need to remember that like anything else, analyzing internals is a process.
With this in mind, let’s check in on the 21-day lows for all S&P market cap sizes:
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
A revolution in energy is upon us.
Some like to call it the green revolution or the transition to renewable and alternative energy. How you want to label it isn’t what matters.
All we care about is that the landscape for energy and how we use it is changing dramatically.
As the world quickly changes and the demand for energy expands, how we generate and utilize it, as well as the natural resources we rely upon to do so - will inevitably change, and adapt to this new environment.
Of course, we’ll continue to burn coal, crude oil, and natural gas for the foreseeable future. But there are other pockets of strength arising in areas that could very well be secular growth trends for decades into the future.
We’re always looking to identify these new arenas of growth. Here’s the way we see it...
With strong prospects for global growth and economic expansion in the cards, additional energy sources will need to be created so that supply can meet the growing demand being placed on an already antiquated and stressed infrastructure.
I've personally been in the market for a new or used car for a few months now, and let's just say it hasn't been easy. The entire supply chain has been disrupted, and the market has been unable to keep up with demand.
I finally made the decision to stop my search until the supply crunch for semiconductors and other critical inputs alleviates. I could be waiting a while though, as this has already been going on for about a year. Thankfully, I live on an island that is only 8 square miles, so my bike or feet can take me wherever I need to go in the meantime.
As many of you know, something we’ve been working on internally is using various 'bottoms-up' tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!
One way we’re doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small, to mid, to large - and ultimately mega-cap status (over $200B).
Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B) they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.
But the scan doesn’t just end there. We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.
Some markets have been choppy for longer than others. Most of the Nasdaq has been a chop fest since February, and so have Emerging Markets. Now since about May a lot more of the cyclical and developed markets have taken a hit.
You can see that in the Equally-weighted S&P500 Index:
In the recent All Star Charts monthly conference call, one of the themes that were repeated often was that stocks are in a "hot mess." In other words, many sectors are a bit stuck in the mud, offering very few signals or hints on the next direction. And when stocks aren't offering us many clues, the likely conclusion is that we'll go sideways for a while. It might be choppy, but the net result will be a whole big bowl of nothing.
With that in mind, it pays to look for opportunities to take advantage of stocks or ETFs that have somewhat elevated implied volatilities (meaning options are richly priced) and put on delta neutral credit spreads. We already did this earlier this week, and we're going to continue with another similar trade in a wildly different ETF.
What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y-axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.
This chart can be of any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes it’s an absolute price chart, other times it’s on a relative basis.
It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!
The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.
While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…
So, let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Earlier in the week, we held our July Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.
Key takeaway: A diminishing appetite for risk combined with deteriorating breadth creates a backdrop conducive to equity indexes catching down to the weakness that has been on display beneath the surface. While bulls remain elevated overall, that could change very quickly as the stage is set for a complete sentiment unwind. Optimism has already begun to edge lower, with AAII bulls dropping to their lowest level since October. Any major signs of adversity could rock the optimistic outlook of a market that has gone relatively unchallenged for the last year.
Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Risk Off Resolution
