This is the video recording of the May 2024 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Crude oil is searching for a foothold. Copper is climbing. And gold is clinging to its record high.

Like most of the market, raw materials are weathering the storm with varying degrees of success.

Nevertheless, today’s commodity deck includes plenty of uplifting charts – plus a trade you’ll want to take home over the weekend…

Check out the Water Resources ETF $PHO posting a new all-time high:

JC discussed PHO at the start of 2022 during a Live Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our May Monthly Strategy Session earlier in the week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The talking heads are about to call the top in commodities.

It’s coming, so we might as well prepare. 

In fact, it’ll only get louder if the US dollar follows crude’s lead…

Crude oil and the dollar have traded in sync for a few years now (mainly due to the strong positive correlation between the buck and interest rates).

During Q3 of last year, the energy sector rallied with the US dollar while most of the market fell under pressure. 

This relationship has been so strong we actually like swapping bonds for energy stocks in the new sixty-forty portfolio.

But crude oil, interest rates, and the US dollar have rallied for almost four straight months. 

They’re all due for a correction.

Here’s crude oil leading the way, violating a multi-month trendline:

Last night was my favorite thing that we do around here.

We had our LIVE Monthly Charts Strategy Session for Premium Members of ASC.

This hour-long, 150-chart Monthly ritual allows us to take a step back, zoom out, and identify the most important primary trends across markets.

There is nothing we do here that adds as much value to my process than preparing for this call.

Premium Members can watch the replay here and download all the slides.

If you're not a Premium Member yet, you can fix that here quickly.

The bottom line is this:

Markets are a mess. They've been a mess. And this year is very different than last year.

Look at the Equally-weighted S&P500 and Nasdaq100.

While these are certainly good overall gauges for the health of the US Stock market, always, in this particular environment they are even more representative of what's going on out there.

The month isn't over yet but I peaked.

How many assets can you think of that have been positive every single month this year?

Where do you find the most consistent leadership?

Is it in Technology?

No. Tech is down over 4.5% the past 2 months.

Is it Consumer Discretionary?

Nope. It's down 2 months in a row, falling almost 3%.

The answer is the US Dollar and Crude Oil Futures.

As we enter the final day of April, these 2 assets have been positive every month so far in 2024.

The Japanese Yen hit levels last night not seen in over 30 years.

There was historic volatility this morning and some key reversals that may or may not hold over the short-term.

But what you need to know is that the Yen is crashing. It's been losing value relative to "things".

These "things" include all kinds of assets including stocks, commodities and bitcoin, who have all been hitting new highs when priced in Japanese Yen.

Look at Bitcoin hitting new all-time highs in Yen terms:

Imagine being one of these people who are lying to US citizens about falling interest rates?

Or worse, imagine being one of the poor victims who actually believed them?

Ouch.

The people lying to you include journalists across old media, a few economists that are somehow still employed, and even the President of the United States of America.

Or maybe the Biden didn't actually lie to you. It could have been the intern, who tells him what to say, that is the one behind the false information.

Either way, none of these people are here to help you. They're only here to help themselves. That's how this works.

So as investors, it's important for us to actually look to see what's happening, instead of blindly trusting some random source, even if that includes the President of the United States, who's been lying to you about falling interest rates all year.

Is the fact that he is up for reelection later this year further incentivizing these lies?

Probably.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Natural gas futures are due for a pop.

It might sound silly as the widow-maker is falling back toward its mid-1990s lows.

But this is a logical level to witness a sustained rally. Especially when you consider previous cycles and where Natural Gas is trading relative to crude…

Earlier this week, JC mentioned the crude oil vs. natural gas ratio during an internal strategy session.

He tracked this relationship when he day-traded natty gas, using it as a mean reversion indicator.

Fast-forward to today, and the crude-to-natural-gas ratio is retreating from its highest level in more than a decade.

The last time the ratio hit these levels, natural gas futures ripped 225% in less than two years. 

Stock prices don't move based on "fundamentals".

Prices move based on positioning.

When investors are primarily on one side of a market, the pendulum swings to the other extreme.

One of my heroes John Roque said it best, "We're not in a reversion TO the mean business, we're in a reversion BEYOND the mean business".

In other words, from extremes in positioning, the market doesn't just go back to the average positioning. It tends to continue towards the other extreme.

This is the situation we currently find ourselves in as investors.

This is one of the biggest questions we want to ask ourselves right now.

How many ounces of Silver does it take to buy just 1oz of Gold?

The answer is that it's currently too many.

Here is the Ratio between Gold and Silver, overlaid with a 200-week moving average just to smooth out the data better.

As we've discussed here plenty, this year is very different than last year.

Remember in 2023 when breakouts would stick and prices of stocks and ETFs would keep heading higher?

That's not happening these days.

It's actually been the opposite.

The bigger question for me is whether these new trends are here to stay, or if at some point the stock market reverts to those longer underlying uptrends that got us here.

Another question I have is which mining companies are going to lead their groups as metals continue to make new highs.

Here's a good way to view it. This is Gold breaking out of a decade+ long base to new all-time highs, resuming its secular uptrend from the 2000s.