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.

You can 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 as well as discuss the most important themes and developments taking place in markets all around the world.

While the weight of the evidence remains in the bull's favor, we continue to see more data arrive that suggests the environment could be shifting toward one that is less conducive to risk assets, at least over shorter timeframes.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. We can then put these near-term developments into the context of the big picture and glean insights into the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

This is a fun one. I got to sit down with Paul Ciana to talk about all things Fixed Income, Commodities and Currencies. Paul is now the Chief Global FICC Technical Strategist and Director of Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. But in the early days, him and I used to study for our CMTs together back in 2006.

What's nice about this is that in his current position, and for 10 years at Bloomberg prior to his 5 years at BofA, he's had the opportunity to speak to many of the largest portfolio managers in the world. I want to know what he's learned from all those conversations!

Paul always gives great perspective and as you know, the macro view carries a big weighting throughout our process. So this episode really hit home.

The DeFi Revolution is upon us, at least according to Jim Bianco. For many years, I've looked up to Jim and the work he's been doing at Bianco Research and, in fact, he's the one who first inspired me to rip through hundreds of charts during my live presentations in order to get my points across. It took me about a decade to realize it, but it was him who I got that from.

Fast forward to 2021, and the Macro Technician who I've always admired has turned into one of the leading voices of what's taking place in DeFi, or "Decentralized Finance". Who better to talk to about what's going on than Jim himself? Ethereum, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Yield Farming, Metamask Wallets, Coinbase....the whole thing.

It sure feels like a long time ago now, but it's been less than a decade since the European Union underwent a rather serious sovereign debt crisis.

This set off a roughly two year bear market for International Stocks as well as a rangebound mess for US stocks.

After this bout of volatility, most risk-assets carved out significant lows in 2016 and rallied higher until global risk peaked in 2018. Then it all fell apart again last year.

This brings us to today, where we're now seeing European countries and indexes trade right back up to their 2018 or pre-COVID highs left and right.

While diversified global indexes like MSCI EAFE $EFA and MSCI Europe $VGK recently reclaimed their former highs from 2014, 2018, and are already well above their pre-COVID peaks - they are now approaching a far more important area of overhead resistance at their pre-financial crisis highs.

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

One major theme that we’re watching closely right now are the growing number of risk assets at or near critical levels or key former highs.

We continue to see a variety of world stock market indexes approach crucial inflection points. As the list keeps getting longer, our cautionary view of the potential for further choppiness in many markets gets stronger.  

Where prices resolve from here in major indexes like the MSCI Emerging Markets, EAFE -- and even some major domestic indexes such as the Russell 2000, are about to provide us with some big-time information into the health of global equities and risk-assets in general.

Today, we’re going to look at one of these diversified international indexes that finds itself in this same boat as it approaches its pre-financial crisis record highs.  

This week on the podcast I sit down with Meb Faber, Co-Founder, CEO and CIO of Cambia Investments. In addition to his "Day job", as he puts it, Meb has authored 5 investment books, a countless amount of white papers, and is also a very popular follow on Twitter @MebFaber.

This was really fun for me because Meb is an expert at a lot of things that I am just not, like what happens behind the scenes at ETFs, angel investing and academic studies. He brings up some great points about providing strategies that work, but that people also want/need.

He has some strong opinions about share buy backs instead of distributing dividends, learning through acting and participating, and how lucky him and I are that we took the CMT decades ago when it was a lot easier than it is today!

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.

The weight of the evidence still suggests it's prudent to be a buyer, not a seller, of risk assets for more meaningful time horizons.

Shorter-term, the market looks increasingly messy. For the first time in over a year, defensive assets are beginning to stabilize at logical levels of support, while stocks and major risk groups achieve our upside targets. Even a handful of some key Intermarket ratios are potentially diverging from the broader averages.

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

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

In this post, we’ll summarize 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.

The same themes that we've been pounding the table on more or less continue to drive primary trends.

In recent weeks, we've seen some rotation back into Large and Mega-Caps, which has propelled the major indices to new highs, while SMIDs are still resiliently consolidating. While the list of negative data points has grown, it's still not close to anything that warrants concern.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @GrantHawkridge

Following an onslaught of bullish initiation readings for US stocks last year, global equity markets began to register similar breadth thrusts earlier this year.

In this post, we'll take a look at those thrusts in addition to the current state of international stock market internals.

We'll even take a quick look at some of the differences we're seeing take place beneath the surface in various global markets.

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.

While the same themes we've laid out in previous reports continue to hold strong, we have seen some recent deterioration, particularly in the large-cap sectors and indexes.

Despite an increase in bearish developments, the overall weight of the evidence is still firmly in the bull camp, and we remain aggressive buyers of stocks and risk assets, particularly over any longer-term timeframe.