From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley.

We recently held March’s Monthly Conference Call which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts/topics we covered along with commentary on each.

Let’s dive into it.

One thing we want to watch out for is this recent relative strength in Consumer Staples. I don't think it's necessarily time to sound the alarm just yet, but continued relative strength out of this group is not consistent with higher stock prices.

Now, a couple of weeks doesn't make a trend. But it is curious to see this one not confirming the new lows that the rest of them are putting in:

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

The market continues to fire on all cylinders right now. Last week's gains were nothing but a continuation of the same resiliency and momentum we've come to expect from risk assets over the last year.

This is the video recording of the March 2021 Conference Call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

One lesson you learn pretty quickly as a market analyst is that not all assets are created equal.

Each and every financial instrument carries its own unique bundle of nuances... from a stocks' beta or systematic volatility as well as its residual risk, to the fee structure and rebalancing methodology of an exchange-traded fund or note, to the settlement and delivery procedures governing futures contracts.

All of these things impact the behavior and performance of these various markets.

Today, we're going to focus specifically on the inner workings of International Country ETFs and the way they are impacted by the currency component inherent in these vehicles.

Let's dive right into it, starting with last week's Mystery Chart reveal.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

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 it 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?

Value stocks, Financials, Energy, Industrials and Materials.

If that doesn't scream Canada, then I don't know what does!

Here's what the breakdown looks like:

With Canada's biggest sector breaking out, how can we not be all over this?

Notice the new highs accompanied by positive momentum readings:

We had to put together a short video breaking down the major Canadian Indexes and Sectors. You'll also find some interesting trades in here.

There's a lot going on so let's dive right in.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

As most of you know, we're big on our scans here at All Star Charts. And believe it or not, selloffs are actually some of the best times to scan for strength.

While our parameters will vary based on the market backdrop, there are two main things we almost always focus on when scanning for strong stocks in any environment.

First and foremost, we're always looking for leadership. As many of you know, I'm a big advocate of fishing in the right places. Whether it's secret spots on the gulf stream or areas of markets showing strength, it's the same strategy... We want to position ourselves for the best catch.

We also want to limit our risk in case we're wrong. For us, this is as simple as betting only on those setups with clearly defined risk/rewards that are skewed heavily in our favor.

In other words, if we're right, we book hefty profits. On the other hand, if we're wrong, we'll know quickly and be out with minimal damage, and onto the next opportunity.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In our continued effort to identify individual equities that fit within our larger Macro thesis, we recently rolled out our latest bottoms-up scan: "The Minor Leaguers."

We write a post every other week where we outline some of our favorite setups from this universe of stocks.

We've already had some great trades come out of this column and couldn't be happier about the early feedback.

Moving forward, we'll be rotating this column with "Under The Hood" each week.

In order to make it onto our Minor League list, you must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters.

Then, we simply sort the stocks by their percentage from new highs. Easy done.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Small-Caps have been outperforming the large-cap indexes by a mile so far this year.

Since January 1st, the S&P Small-Cap 600 is up roughly 25%, compared with just a 5% gain for the S&P 500, and 0% for the Nasdaq 100.

This leadership is showing no signs of slowing, as they once again led the market back to fresh all-time highs this week after a brief and shallow reset.

Not only has the momentum behind this move been astounding, but the S&P Small-Cap 600 just experienced another significant breadth thrust, this time in its percentage of new 52-week highs.

Let's take a quick look at these developments and what they mean for the group going forward.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Markets never operate in a static manner. Instead, markets are dynamic and remain in a natural and constant state of flux.

In knowing this, we must always remain flexible and aware of the changing conditions and developments taking place around us. We pride ourselves on our ability to evolve and adapt to these changes in market structure and are never dogmatic in our approach.

For the last decade, US large-cap growth has been where the alpha is, and derivatives of this theme like large over small, stocks over commodities, and US over international have been very powerful relative trends. We know this well because we've been leaning on them for a long time...

But that's all changed recently, as we've been vocal about the importance of repositioning and decreasing exposure to growth in favor of more cyclical, value-oriented stocks.