We're now well into Year 3 of this bull market. 

So the question becomes: Is this fresh breakout the beginning of the next leg higher for equities?

Or is this market behavior evidence of exhaustion and it's time to get out?

Let me remind you of the "Fab 5" charts from the beginning of 2024 that helped determine whether we were starting a new leg higher this year or if it was time to bail.

The breakouts coming into this year, specifically in Broker Dealers, Technology, Industrials, Homebuilders and Semiconductors were the most important...

With the Stock Market making new all-time highs every month, you would think that American consumers would be a little more optimistic.

You would think...

The S&P500 keeps hitting new all-time highs. Same for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq100.

More recently the S&P600 Small-caps, Dow Jones Transportation Average and Bitcoin all joined the New All-time highs list.

And yet...

Sentiment is still way down in the dumps.

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment data goes all the way back to the 1950s. So this isn't some kind of random johnny-come-lately poll.

There's real data here that reiterates how bull markets end with too much optimism, but thrive throughout periods with too much pessimism.

Currently, it's the excess pessimism that continues to drive the returns in Stocks,...

Bitcoin just broke out to new all-time highs. The new bull market in Crypto is alive and well.

BTC actually closed yesterday at the highest level in history, and now has a market cap of over $1.5 Trillion.

For perspective, there are only 5 companies in the S&P500 that are worth more that Bitcoin: Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Amazon.

Every other stock is worth less than Bitcoin. As we say around here, Bitcoin is the 8th component of the "Magnificent 8".

But as we know from prior cycles, as well as Bitcoin performs, it doesn't even come close to the real winners.

Remember the last Crypto Bull Market? DogeCoin rallied 37,000% in a little over a year to reach an $85 Billion market-cap:

The goal this cycle is to catch moves like this.

And we're already seeing it.

Dog Wif Hat recently rallied 7000% in just 3 months to reach a market-cap of $4.5 Billion:

Looking out even longer, Popcat already gained 34,000% over the past 10 months to reach a current market-cap of over $1.4 Billion.

That would be almost a mid-cap if it was a stock:

And the latest monster that's been...

The market has spoken.

It's only a bubble if it's going up and they don't own enough of it, or any at all.

They only call things bubbles when they have a hard time understanding why prices are doing what they're doing.

As someone who studies human behavior every single day, I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that 99.9% of people who call things bubbles haven't actually done any of the work required to determine whether something is in a bubble or not.

And that's the key thing here.

There is a huge arbitrage between the people who put in the work, and actually take the time to analyze markets using real data, and those who are too busy doing other things to truly have an honest opinion about whether a particular period of time is, in fact, a bubble.

Bubbles, as those of us with common sense know, are incredibly rare, by definition.

So when someone calls something a bubble, they are almost certainly wrong about that, or in most cases, just making it up because they don't know how else to describe certain market behaviors that they can't wrap their heads around.

Bitcoin, for example, just broke out to new all-time highs...

The market has spoken.

They either love Donald Trump as your President. Or maybe it's that they're just happy the election is over.

Either way, this consolidation has now resolved in the direction of the underlying trend: Up.

In fact, yesterday we saw the most amount of stocks on the NYSE hitting new 52-week highs that we've seen in years.

Breadth expansion is not evidence of deteriorating market participation. It's by definition, the exact opposite of that.

More and more stocks and sectors making new highs is something you historically see in bull markets. So this is perfectly normal.

Remember when they kept telling you that this was only a "bear market rally" because the small-cap indexes hadn't made a new high yet?

They were lying to you.

Besides, the S&P600 Small-cap Index just closed at a new all-time high yesterday. 

Imagine waiting for this index to make new highs before deciding to participate in this bull market?

There are serial killers out there who actually think this way. These people are sick in the head.

The much more reliable confirmation indicator, which dates back to...

As expected, Trump won by landslide. It was never even close. 

The public markets and the betting markets had it right. 

The pollsters either got it wrong or they just lied to you. But neither of those is acceptable.

I never trusted those weirdos anyway, because why would I?

The way I learned it was that it's not about what they say, but about what they do. Money talks. And the money was right again.

In this case, the market even underestimated the wide margin of victory in last night's election. And the markets have adjusted accordingly.

Dow Futures are up another 1200 points this morning, after putting up a 500 spot during yesterday's session. 

Bitcoin is up 5000 points to new all-time highs this morning

Tesla is up 12% and the Trump SPAC $DJT is up 30%.

So even through the betting markets got the President right, the Tradfi markets hadn't quite priced it all in yet, as we're seeing over the past 24 hours.

Here's the thing: None of us know what the market is going to do. That's the beauty of all this. We are working with incomplete information. And we know that going in. It's ok. 

But there...

We're entering the final stretch of the year.

The market is a discounting mechanism and already looking forward beyond the election and into Q1 2025.

We know. And that's why we had our LIVE Monthly Charts Strategy Session last night. These are the sectors and stocks we're buying right now, and arguably even more importantly, which sectors and stocks we're selling.

This is a CANNOT MISS Conference Call, but it's reserved only for Premium Members for ASC Research. ...

Jeff Macke is the person I go to when it comes to all things Retail and Consumer Brands. He's been doing this longer and better than anyone else I can think of. 

He joined us Thursday night LIVE for Amazon and Apple's earnings. I couldn't imagine trying to understand what was going on without Jeff giving us the play-by-play and color commentary.

Check out the Full Conversation and LIVE reaction to the numbers. He absolutely nailed it. ...

Why does it seem like every time I remind a group of people about the underperformance from Technology stocks, they're always surprised to hear it.

It's like they don't even know that Large-cap Tech stocks have been underperforming for most of the year, and Small-cap Tech has been underperforming for 18 months.

Is this not common knowledge?

Large-cap Tech was actually down in Q3. And then it started out Q4 with a flat September. 

Small-cap Tech is somehow down for all of 2024, despite the Small-cap Russell2000 Index being up double digits this year.

That's the exact definition of underperformance. 

Now, let's keep in mind what Technology even is...

The S&P500 Technology Index includes stocks like Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia as its largest components.

Google and Meta are NOT in Technology. They're both in the Communications index along with Netflix.

Large-cap Communications are actually the best performing sector so far in 2024. This group is very different than "Tech":

Communications are outperforming the S&P500, Nasdaq100 and even Utilities (which became cool this year). 

When...

Bitcoin is moving this week and is already working on a breakout to new all-time highs.

Amazon reports earnings this Thursday, and is also attempting to break out above its prior cycle's peak to go on to new all-time highs.

Apple already broke out above its 2021 top, and has already been making new all-time highs for months. 

Apple's breakout and extension to new highs, in my opinion, is setting the stage for Amazon and Bitcoin to do the same.

Amazon and Apple both report their earnings this...

This is NOT a political post.

So if you're one of these sensitive types who is just too mentally weak to put your politics aside when making decisions about the market, then you're in the wrong place Karen. 

For those of you who can be adults and actually focus on data and facts, here are some thoughts that might help you put the next couple of weeks in perspective.

At this point, I think it's pretty clear that the market has fully priced in a second trump presidency.

Here's a look at the betting markets showing the red line (trump) moving very aggressively to the upper right of the chart, while the blue line (harris) has been moving to the lower right of the chart.

You'll hear the conspiracy theories that a few guys behind the scenes are manipulating these markets because they are in favor of trump.

That's one way to look at it. 

Peter Thiel, a well-known republican, is an investor in Polymarket.

So it's certainly possible that him and his buddies are moving markets and just throwing money away to help influence political outcomes.

Yes. That is possible...

But here's how I see it. 

...

The best 3 month period of the year begins this week.

We know this.

But to me, the bigger question is how stocks did during what is historically the worst time of the year?

Remember how September and October are supposed to be terrible for stocks?

Well they weren't.

In fact, stocks rallied during September and October. All the major U.S. indexes were up.

Now we enter the Best 3 months: November - January. 

Here's what that looks like:

So if stocks couldn't go down in price during the worst period of the year, how do you think stocks will do when they're actually supposed to go up?

Zooming out, here are the returns of the major indexes during "The Worst 6 Months" of the year.

All of them were up double digits, when historically they were supposed to fall...

For me, we don't like to position ourselves according to seasonal tendencies.

The real value, in my experience, is looking back after the fact to see if the market acknowledged or ignored seasonal trends.

When the market is resilient during the bad times, historically that bodes very well for the upcoming...