They say not to kick someone when they're down. But in the market it's the opposite. When they are down is exactly when you want to kick them. This is especially the case when they are down while other things are up. We don't want to be shorting the strongest stocks. We want to be shorting the underperformers where the holders are losers, they're wrong, stuck and need to get out, but can't. We are here, not only to make money on the upside of things, but also to benefit from the losses of others. When this pain starts to really set in, that's when we want to kick them, when they're down!
In this case I have 3 examples of people who are down. This is in the face of stocks ripping:
You guys know how I feel about equities. We've been on the right of the trade while all the gloom-and-doomers and noisemakers are pulling their hair our of their heads trying to figure out why stocks won't fall. To me, it's been fairly clear: Stocks are in uptrends and that's what stocks in uptrends do, they go up. This has been the trend globally, domestically, large-caps, small-caps, you name it. Talk about breadth expansion, I couldn't tell you the last time I saw this much broad participation out of equities. I encourage you to go through the Chartbook and look through all of the International Stock Indexes, U.S. Averages, Sectors, Dow Components, Transportation Components and additional...
I can't tell you guys how important it is to stop whatever you're doing and take a step back. It's so easy for us to get caught up in the day to day noise and forget about the underlying trends in the market. We're human. We're built to be this way. But recognizing this flaw is an important step in correcting it and trying to benefit from the fact that others are unaware. One of my favorite ways to do this is to look through a series of Monthly Candlestick Charts at the end of every month. Remember, we don't want to look at these mid-month as candles are incomplete. It is the final results that we are most concerned with.
We want to use this bigger picture strategy to identify the directions of the underlying trends in the market. This goes for all markets: Stocks, both U.S. and Globally, Interest Rates, Precious Metals, Energy, Currencies, etc. This is how we know what the trends are so we can then go to our weekly and daily charts to look for more tactical opportunities within those ongoing trends. This is a very important element to our top/down approach.
One of the more interesting scenarios across the global market place is what is happening in the US Dollar, and the Euro component more specifically. Remember, the Euro represents a majority in the entire US Dollar Index. On Monday, the Euro engulfed the prior 13 trading sessions. This means that it made a new low, below the past few weeks trading, and then reversed to close at a new high, above any of the highs over the past few weeks.
Over the past few days I've received requests from readers about my thoughts on Russian stocks. While I don't particularly care about the US/Russia relations when it comes to picking stocks to buy and sell, it seems to be something of interest to a lot of people. So let's dive in.
There is a lot of noise out there about the Mexican Peso and the Presidential Elections. So I can't think of a better time to focus on the supply and demand dynamics in the forex markets to see if we can determine the most likely direction of the Peso. Fortunately, as technicians, we can just ignore all that junk and spend our time on the only factor that actually pays, which is price.
Have you guys noticed that the prices of Gold and Silver have gone nowhere for 3 months? There's a reason why we've wanted to stay out of this market since early July and let them digest their impressive gains since the January lows. Knowing when to stay out of a market is just as important as knowing when to be in it. Opportunity cost should also be considered in the risk calculation.
Today we are taking a deep dive into Gold and we're going to look at things from all angles, all currencies and all time frames.
This morning I was over at the Nasdaq in Times Square chatting with Amber Kanwar on BNN. We discussed why I think U.S. Stocks continue to rally and which key sectors will drive prices higher. Within each of these very important sectors, there are large-cap stocks leading the way for them. I think we're closer to the beginning than the end of this move higher in the S&P500 and these other important sectors. At the end we touch on why extremes in sentiment could be the catalyst to send British Pounds even higher.
Last week I shared with you guys what I thought was an interesting breakout. Like I try and do every now and then, I deleted the labels and the y-axis so you guys wouldn't have any biases towards the charts, knowing what it was. Everyone pretty much agreed that it was a screaming buy. Today we're bringing back the legend and y-axis so you can see exactly what is it. We are also flipping it upside down, the way it was originally intended to be, so you can execute according to your specific time horizon and risk tolerance.
Yen strength across many of its crosses has been a structural theme for the better half of the past year, but today a few of these pairs look to be setting up for some mean reversion over the short-term.
Pound / Yen remains in a downtrend below its downward sloping 200 day and made new lows in April, but momentum diverged positively. Today prices closed back above the February lows to confirm the bullish divergence and failed breakdown. This suggests we want to be long if prices remain above the February lows on a daily closing basis and add to our positions if prices close above the downtrend line from the February highs.
The weight of the evidence has been building in favor of the bears over the last week or two, making the US equity weakness this week anything but surprising. Throughout the duration of this post I'll outline the evidence that I've been noticing over the last two weeks and what it means for us as market participants moving forward.
Yen Strength - The Yen broke out structurally late last year and hasn't looked back since. Tactically my upside targets were hit this week, but structurally this market has a lot more room to run. Given the high negative correlation between the Yen and US equities, this should continue to be a headwind for equity markets going forward.