One of our six charts to watch this week is the Nifty Bank Index, so today we want to look at two stocks showing symptoms of the underlying problem in the sector.
We've been using our "Five Bull Market Barometers" to measure the long-term health of the market and remain in the camp that risk in Equities remains elevated.
In this post, we're going to outline several charts we think will set the tone for the broader market through the rest of the quarter.
First, and most importantly, is the Nifty Bank Index which made new relative lows this week. On an absolute basis, prices are nearing their March lows of 16,100 after failing to reclaim their 2015-2016 highs in April.
Click on chart to enlarge view.
What we're watching is how prices react to those March lows. Is there any meaningful demand at that level? or does the trap door open and we see a quick move towards 13,500?
Earlier this month we outlined the "Five Bull Market Barometers" we're watching to identify the beginning of a new bull market in stocks.
In this post, we'll update those charts without going into as much detail as to why they're important. So if you haven't read our initial post linked above, we'd encourage you to check it out.
With that said, let's jump in and see how these charts have developed since.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Mystery Chart, as always. Most saw that I was doing it this week and didn't even bother to try guessing, simply stating that they were buyers of this massive base breakout on any pullbacks.
Yesterday in our Monthly Conference Call we discussed relative strength in detail and how we're using it to identify opportunities in the current market environment.
Today we wrote a detailed post expanding on our thought process, which we'd highly encourage you to read before continuing with this post.
In this post, we're going to outline several market-neutral trades we think are actionable today.
During Tuesday's Members-Only Conference Call we discussed not wanting to be aggressively long or short stocks on an absolute basis. Our Five Bull Market Barometers continue to suggest this is a choppy, messy environment where we need to be very selective when putting capital to work. Cash/patience and uncorrelated trades like Gold continue to work for those who have the ability to stay out of the equity market.
Not everyone has that luxury though. Many fund managers have a mandate to be long stocks regardless of the market environment. Some may have the ability to short stocks against their exposure, but many are "long-only" and need to outperform in weak markets by owning the stocks that are going down less.
Yesterday in our Monthly Conference Call we discussed our preference for market-neutral and uncorrelated trades given the choppy environment that continues for stocks on an absolute basis.
With that said, today we're taking a look at a stock with clearly defined risk and a heavily skewed reward/risk on the long side.
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?
