Let's take a step back and talk about what a huge waste of money I think it is to own gold. It's not just that I don't think it goes up in value, it's more about what else we could be doing with that money. It's the opportunity cost here that I believe burns the hole in your pocket. Will our money be treated better in rocks or in stocks? I still think it's in stocks.
In early October, I put out a note reiterating why we wanted to be selling gold. This is after over a year of a bullish approach towards the yellow metal. So to be clear, I am not a gold bug or a gold hater. The truth is that I couldn't care less whether gold doubles in price or gets cut in half. It's not my problem. For me, Gold is just another asset in a humongous world of many assets. If you think it's anything more than that, I believe you've already lost.
If you weren't too busy reading reports of upcoming recessions, you may have noticed that the MSCI World Index broke out to new all-time highs this month. The award for best ETF Ticker goes to the good folks at iShares: $URTH
After a 21-month bear market, the planet Earth is now starting a new leg higher. I continue to believe very strongly that if stocks are above last year's highs, it is incredibly irresponsible not to be aggressively long.
There is information everywhere. We analyze both the Indexes and the ETFs. We look at markets all over the world priced in both local currency and in US Dollars. We often use Gold as the denominator as well as the Indexes themselves to analyze relative strength. It's one big giant web of money flow.
Today I want to call your attention to an interesting divergence that has come at important turning points in the past. Specifically I'm referring to the Wisdom Tree Hedged Exchange Traded Funds for Europe and Japan: $HEDJ and $DXJ respectively. These funds are priced in local currencies as opposed to most other ETFs around the world that are priced in US Dollars.
First, here is the Europe Index Fund priced in Euro breaking out to all-time highs. I've been chuckling to myself a lot lately because when was the last time you could say the words "Europe" and "all-time" highs in the same sentence with a straight face?
When stocks are in strong uptrends, they tend to not only do well on an absolute basis, but they outperform their alternatives as well. Two obvious ones are Gold and Bonds.
So if stocks are going to fall hard, like so many people keep telling me, we are likely to see a bid in Precious Metals and US Treasury Bonds. As it turns out, however, we've only seen the exact opposite - bonds and metals struggling below overhead supply.
Back in August I made the case that if stocks were going much higher, as we thought they would, then the S&P500 will hold support at the late December lows relative to both Gold and Bonds. You can watch that short video here. This is what that chart looks like now:
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about all of the new highs we're seeing on both Weekly and Monthly charts. We've been pointing to the improvements in market breadth in recent months and how we've been getting an expansion in positive participation, not a contraction. This week we started to finally see this work its way into the weekly and monthly charts, but that doesn't change anything we didn't already know. We continue with the breadth discussion by pointing out that the world doesn't start and end with the 52-week highs list. We're seeing breadth improvements in the 21-day high and 13-week high lists and I'm in the camp that we'll ultimately see that reflected on the 52-week high list as well. It's a process, remember:
In this episode of the Money Game Podcast Phil and I talk about the stock market making all-time highs while sentiment points to very few bulls. This is an interesting dynamic where the behavior of the market is pointing to one thing and the behavior and emotions of society are saying something different. I've been in the camp that this negative sentiment unwind is precisely the catalyst to take stocks much higher, not just in the U.S. but around the world. It's very rare to have stocks this strong, yet so few people betting on higher stock prices. It's pretty awesome. We also talk about the deterioration, or at least an end to the expansion we're seeing, in the upside participation in stocks. We're seeing MORE stocks, sectors and global indexes participating to the upside, not fewer. Until that stops, we want to keep looking for stocks to buy.
What do we know about all-time highs? They are not a characteristic of a downtrend. New all-time highs are things we see when we're in a market environment where it is more advantageous to be buying stocks rather them selling them. This is what we have today, whether you like it or not.
The market doesn't care that you don't like the president. The market doesn't care that you think this is only because of buybacks. The market doesn't care that you think this is fed driven. THE MARKET DOES NOT CARE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT ANYTHING.
EVER.
Anyway, on Halloween we got new all-time monthly closing highs in the S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Global 100 Index, Nasdaq Composite, Nasdaq 100, S&P 1500, Dow Jones Composite Average, Consumer Discretionary Index, Technology Index, Semiconductor Index, US Real Estate Index, J.P. Morgan Chase, Microsoft, Apple, Google, the Europe Hedged Index Fund and Brazil's Bovespa, among many others.
Are these reasons to now all of a sudden start selling stocks? My argument is no.
Have you noticed that with Tech and Software and other areas grinding sideways or lower, we've seen a consistent bid in Emerging Markets? Have you looked at Brazil lately? The last thing stock market bears want to see is rotation into these serial underperformers.
I don't think this is a tiny story either. I think there is a much bigger theme going on here that would be irresponsible to ignore. First of all, let's make something clear. Copper prices and Emerging Market stocks move together. You can't argue with me on this one.
Copper doesn't move with the "economy". Copper doesn't move with the S&P500. Copper is not a "Dr." of any kind. Copper moves with Emerging Markets. Period:
