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

It’s been a routine hurricane season down here so far this year. Things have picked up lately, and we’ve had a few close calls over the past week. 

But storms aren’t just brewing in the Atlantic...

It’s also beginning to look dicey in the commodities market, with lots of “close calls” these days.

Strong headwinds such as the rising dollar have hit some of the most important procyclical assets this week. Apparently, there’s some geopolitical stuff going on, too. Then again, when isn’t there? 

Let’s discuss what we’re seeing and try to determine just how likely these winds could evolve into a major storm for commodities.

Energy, base metals, precious metals, and ags have either pulled back from recent highs or have broken critical levels of support.

Given that many areas have experienced near parabolic advances during the past year, a corrective phase would be a healthy and welcome development. It makes total sense for commodities to digest their monster gains at current levels. And remember, sideways is always an option.

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

Rotation is the lifeblood of any bull market.

If a sustained uptrend is going to persist, then we need to have broadening participation... or at least some healthy rotation.

And that’s exactly what we're seeing within commodities right now. 

As the energy group chops sideways and base metals hang tough, we’re starting to see signs of strength from one of the worst-performing areas over the past year.

Softs.

Like livestock last week, it appears this group of commodities are ready to play catch-up as they turn the corner and head higher. 

Considering the fact that other groups are simply consolidating or correcting through time instead of price, we'd argue that this looks more like an expansion in participation rather than rotation. But it's really just semantics. It's all bullish at the end of the day. Let's dive in.

Do you have any exposure to Energy?

Then this is the chart for you!

It's Crude Oil stuck between 76 and 66:

Whenever Frances calls to chat about the market, she knows she's getting a yes!

Frances Horodelski and I have been doing this for about a decade, through multiple cycles. It's always fun!

She was hosting a commodities-focused show today so we discussed Metals and Energy.

I think there is a lot going on in this space and it's setting up for a big move.

We couldn't help but talk Financials and Crypto, but it was mostly Commodities.

Hope you enjoy!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return 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.

We consider this our weekly state of the union address as we break down and reiterate both our tactical and structural outlook on various asset classes and discuss the most important themes and developments currently playing out in markets all around the world.

The market has spoken.

You might have your conspiracy theories about market manipulation or inflation or whatever story they're telling these days.

But it's only the price that pays. We just want to sell things at higher prices than where we buy them.

And you're going to have a hard time finding a worse investment over the past year than Precious Metals.

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

Breakouts continue to emerge left and right within the commodity space as participation expands to more and more subgroups. 

One of the areas that’s had our attention lately is Livestock. Last month, we highlighted lean hogs. 

And while they’ve since fallen back below our risk level, we’re now seeing cattle futures attempt to break higher from a similar base.

Let’s dive in and outline some long setups in these livestock futures as they’re offering a favorable risk/reward at current levels...

First up is a weekly continuation chart of Feeder Cattle futures:   

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

We held our August Monthly Strategy Session last night. 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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

We can’t ignore the resiliency in base metals. 

Despite the classic year-two chop, base metals have remained buoyant while many other risk assets have come under pressure. They’ve even gained ground during the recent bout of US dollar strength. 

And now we’re beginning to see signs of serious leadership emerge as Crude Oil consolidates its recent gains. The broad-based strength beneath the surface for this procyclical group of commodities has been undeniable. These risk-on metals have been the steadiest performers within the entire asset class for the better part of this year.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

We're going to flip the script a bit this week with our RPP Report. We typically don't publish a report during week's where we have a monthly conference call as JC covers our positioning and summarizes our key themes and views there.

But we didn't do one last week either because we had just published our Q3 Playbook which laid out our current position in a painfully detailed manner (it was 250 pages!).

Premium members: read it here if you haven't yet.

In today's post, we're simply going to recap our "Key Themes For The Current Quarter" and update clients on some major developments that have taken place in the past few weeks.

We've got some important things to cover so let's get right to it!

We're back to discuss some commodity ideas that are looking good at current levels. For the longest time, we've been looking out for a commodity supercycle. Over the past few months, we saw base metals halting their move and digesting their gains. But there are certain pockets that are demanding our attention so we thought what better than to share them with you!

Nickel is trading at lifetime highs, ladies and gentlemen! That's big news coming at a time when we're seeing a mess in most asset classes and markets. With the close in the week gone by, the base metal moved past its resistance and closed above it.

As we can see below, the price was finding it difficult to get past the level of 1,425. Now with that out of the way, we're looking at a target of 1,630 in Nickel. 1,425 will continue to act as the risk management level. If we know anything about the recent move in base metals, then we know not to put all our eggs in one basket.

Several premature breakouts later we've reached this point. So it is all the more important to be clear about your risk management level!

Click on the chart to zoom in.

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

The markets are a mess and have been a mess for months now.

Risk assets are under pressure as the USD strengthens and overhead supply thwarts potential rallies.

Yet, we continue to find pockets of strength in both stocks and commodities.

We’ve said it time and time again during the past several months...the markets are a bifurcated, choppy mess! 

But during these challenging periods, identifying areas that are bucking the trend can prove valuable over intermediate- and longer-term timeframes.

Basically, the assets holding up the best or even breaking out while the broader market is trendless are likely to be your future leaders.

Let’s take a look at one area of the market doing just that!

Here’s a chart of the ASC Green Revolution Index: