From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

We recently held February’s Monthly Conference Call which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts/topics we covered along with commentary on each.

Let’s dive into it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance 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 continue to harp on the risk-on themes that support our bullish macro thesis.

Rotation down the market-cap scale, commodity strength, and defensive alternatives making new relative lows have been some major themes we continue to see play out.

As participation continues to expand in both the US and abroad, we're being given more and more avenues to position ourselves in order to profit in the current environment.

While Tech and Growth still remain the secular leaders, even the perennial laggards such as...

I was away from the office last week with the team, but I was still able to pop into BNN Bloomberg for a quick hit.

We discussed the fact that fear among investors is off the charts, stocks are in uptrends and breadth is expanding. I think the beginning of the new Commodities Supercycle is bullish for stocks and just another tailwind to take them higher.

If the tv anchors think I'm making a bold call by suggesting that stocks in uptrends will go higher, then we're probably not near a top.

Here's the interview in full:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance 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.

In last week's report, we played "devil's advocate" and laid out some of the more bearish developments we could find out there.

But all-in-all, the market is still providing bears less room to make a sound argument. We continue to find that any bearish evidence is primarily isolated to shorter timeframes... and even then, still overwhelmed by the abundance of bullish data points.

So while a minor rise in volatility can be expected in what tends to be a seasonally weak month of February, over a longer timeframe, we're still aggressive buyers of stocks.

When we poured over our...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

In a post last month JC discussed the recent strength in Commodities and posed the following question...

If the CRB Index is above its 2016 lows and Crude Oil is above all those former lows from the past decade, how can we be bearish commodities?

Over the last few quarters, we've seen more and more intermarket relationships make a significant shift in favor of risk-assets.

Many are showing early signs of a structural reversal and others simply accelerating in the direction of their underlying trend.

From Bonds and Agriculture, to Chinese equities, and cyclical stocks like SMIDs, Materials...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

They say the Bond Market is where the smart money is. Maybe it is. I have no idea.

What I do know is that it's where a lot of the smart information is.

Due to the diversity among credit instruments, there is a swath of unique data that we can use not just for Bond prices and Interest Rates but also to glean insight into other asset classes.

I'm talking about things like TIPS for inflation expectations and Emerging Market or High Yield Bonds to analyze risk-appetite for other assets such as the stock market.

Alpha has been in Equities and risk-assets for a while now. As such, we haven't needed to discuss bonds from a portfolio perspective... but that doesn't mean we aren't paying close attention to these assets.

The Bond Market is overflowing with information. We'd be foolish to neglect it.

In this post, we'll dive into what we mean by this and share some of it with you. We'll also discuss the implications of what we're seeing in the...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance 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.

As we discussed in our latest report, bears are running out of any substantial fuel to support their position.

And despite the arrival of some long-awaited selling pressure last week, that absolutely remains the case.

From a more tactical standpoint, though, we're seeing early signs of some volatility moving into what is a seasonally weak post-election month.

In this post, we'll play "devil's advocate" and lay out some of the more bearish developments we could find out there right now. You know... the kinds of things that could start to...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

The market is giving us absolutely no reason to play defense right now.

Regardless of the asset class, it's the risk-takers that are having their way in this environment.

Investors stretching out along the risk spectrum is a point we've been hammering home for some time now, particularly in our weekly RPP Reports - like this one.

Not only is this true on absolute terms, but we're also witnessing cross-asset relationships progress higher and in favor of risk-asset which can only be taken as a positive.

It's not often we see all asset classes in agreement with each other, but when we do, it's a significant driving force that supports the risk-on trade and suggests higher prices to come.

In a piece from a few weeks ago, we explored the absolute trends in the ...

This week on the podcast, Jonathan Krinsky joins me for a chat about Sector Rotation. While the Mega-cap names like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft grinded sideways, or even down, since August, the Small-caps, Mid-caps and Micro-cap names have been the leaders. What happens if the Mega-caps break out of these bases to new all-time highs? Does the sector rotation continue? Or do we then rotate into the more defensive areas like Staples, Utilities and REITs, which currently keep making new relative lows?

Where does the US Dollar fit into all this? Will a Dollar rally bust the party and end the rotation into International equities and Commodities? We discussed all of this and so much more in a very short period of time. Jonathan Krinsky is the Chief Market Technician at Bay Crest Partners and puts out research for many long/short equity fund managers. He's a CMT like me and we've known each other for many...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance 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 in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

As we discussed in last week's report, bears have a lot of work cut out for them.

With all this rotation into offensive groups and cyclical areas of the market, they are really running out of talking points. We literally can't find a meaningful group of stocks in the US or even abroad that we would want to short at this point.

This is excellent information as it's not something we can say very often... and it's bullish, just to be clear.

The move higher in equities is being supported by significant cap-rotation at the index level as well as broad participation among sectors, and most recently, even international stock markets.

Basically, it's hard to find stocks that...

What would it take to finally end the long-term bear market in commodities?

How about Crude Oil Futures trading below zero?

Yes, remember when Oil traded in the negatives last year?

This is something most of us never thought was possible. If you had this on your list of possibilities, kudos to you I guess.

I didn't.

This is the video recording of the January 2021 Conference Call.