This week's Mystery Chart exercise gives us a nice glimpse into the current sentiment amid the recent volatility, so thanks to all those who responded. The overwhelming majority of you we're either selling or doing nothing, which comes as little surprise.
Many of you wanted to sell this chart aggressively and even cited the current market environment as part of you're reasoning. But! The chart was inverted... so all those who were pounding the table to short it were actually buying the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) relative to the Russell 3000 (IWV).
I'm curious to see how, if at all, this changes your perspective on the chart. Tweet me @sstrazza with your thoughts!
In a post earlier this month, we scanned the S&P 500 for the strongest uptrends so that we'd be prepared to buy stocks when the market stabilized. Well three weeks and an additional 25% drawdown later, and we're going to do a similar exercise.
The last two days' rally in stocks confirmed bullish breadth divergences which suggest a tradeable bottom is near and put the S&P 500 back above its 2018 lows around 2350, giving us a well-defined level to manage risk against. If prices fail to hold this level, all bets are off, but as long as we're above it, we think the bias is to the upside over the coming weeks to months. As such, we're looking for long opportunities that offer asymmetric risk/reward setups in the strongest stocks, three of which we outline below.
We are constantly analyzing market breadth. We do this not just for insight into the strength of the current trend but also because it helps us identify key turning points. We outlined a variety of deteriorating breadth measures in a post last month to support our bearish outlook on stocks, and the signal turned out to be quite timely as the market collapsed soon after.
With the market now severely oversold amid one of the swiftest bear markets in history, we're looking to breadth measures once again for signs of a tradeable low.
As we look for signs of a tradeable low in Equities, we're not only looking at breadth and the stock market's leaders, we're also looking to the Commodity market for a signal of what's to come.
Let's get into why Copper needs to be on your radar.
For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!
We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.
You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?
Do you see how stocks are making new lows? That's a characteristic of downtrends, not uptrends. We first want to identify what type of market environment we're in, and then decide which tools we're going to use to help us profit and manage risk.
Something interesting about the current market is that a lot of stocks are making new lows. Most stocks are. But there are a select few that decided they were going to make new highs instead. We call that Relative Strength. You sometimes hear people say how they're "Bucking the trend". This is that.
Our upside target in Zoom Video $ZM was hit today. That was a quick 40% gain. One for the good guys!
But which one is next? I think it's Docusign $DOCU. The stock is ripping to all-time highs relative to S&Ps and prices have been consolidating nicely. I think the next move is higher.
Have you noticed how stocks keep making lower lows and lower highs? We call those downtrends.
There's an important reason why I bring this up. There is a much higher likelihood for markets to continue in the direction they're heading in, than for them to just reverse course and start to move in the opposite direction. This is true for both uptrends and downtrends.
We live in an interesting world of double standards. When stocks are going up and "irresponsible" shorts are getting squeezed, no one feels bad for them. In fact, short sellers get ridiculed for "being so stupid" (see: $TSLA last year). But when longs are getting killed for being irresponsible, we're supposed to feel bad for them right? That's how this works?
I know there are certain perceptions about the intentions of shorts betting on a company failing vs shareholders betting on a company's growth. Fine. But seriously, is there a difference at the end of the day. It's really just math for most of us. I think we really need to think about these things. I don't have the answers, but I certainly question the hypocrisy.
There has been a lot of risk in the stock market over the past 2 months and that still has not changed. Things are getting worse, not better. I tried to emphasize in this week's Live Call that we have NOT seen any evidence to suggest that the worst of the selling is behind us.
We've been inundated with emails from Financial Advisors and traders all over the world. From New York to London, South Africa, Malaysia, Laguna Beach they keep coming in. We work really hard and it is so nice to see how much we've been able to help people, both pros and every day hard working individuals. Thank you from all of us at Allstarcharts! We don't take these notes for granted even for a second.
We know times are tough for some people right now. I have friends and family that lost their jobs today. I'm seeing it outside of markets.
Just as we focus on the strongest markets and stocks to find opportunities during equity bull markets, we look to identify the weakest areas during bear markets. We just want to be in the strongest trends, regardless of their direction.
A few weeks ago we ran some statistics to highlight US stocks that were bucking the trend during the selloff, as those would be the areas to focus on if/when equities eventually regained their footing. While many names have fared well, we were a bit early as the market soon broke below our risk management levels, putting us in a position where we no longer want to be long stocks.
