The risks associated with owning stocks are currently elevated.
There are a lot of things I can say, levels I can point out, possible outcomes I can walk you through, all those things. But the one common denominator between all of those is that the risk in owning stocks is currently higher than it normally is.
This is an important time to remember your original investment objectives, time horizon and risk parameters. Before buying a stock, or entering any investment for that matter, these 3 questions need to be answered. I can't answer them for you. But what I can do is show you what we're seeing from an intermediate-term horizon.
Our goals here are to make money this quarter. We care about the coming weeks and months. It doesn't matter to us what the market does next year, and it doesn't matter what it does today. Weeks and Months. That's our focus.
Over the past month, Bonds are up a bunch as the collapse in Interest Rates has resumed. We jumped on board this bond trade last month and so far it's working.
Meanwhile, a majority of U.S. stocks are actually down over the past month. While the S&P500, Dow Industrials and Nasdaq100 have gone on to make new highs, the NYSE Advance-Decline line (stocks only) did not, Small-caps did not, Dow Transports did not, and a majority of individual stocks did not. It's only a minority of names doing the work, particularly large-cap stocks and some higher dividend paying areas like REITs and Utilities.
When you run the numbers, most stocks in the U.S. are down over the past month, with negative average and median returns for the Russell3000 components. It's the bonds that are up and I think they're just getting started.
As you guys know, we've had a much more defensive approach to the stock market over the past few weeks, especially compared to how bullish we had been for so long. There is a time to be big and aggressive and a time to be small and cash heavy. I believe we're currently in the latter of those two categories.
There is a lot going on in the market right now, not just in the U.S. but globally. The intermarket relationships between Bonds, Gold and the US Dollar are having a major impact on equities.
January is a month that gives us a lot more information than most other months throughout the year. We have the data now that we can use to help us identify primary trends.
Volatility is picking up. Daily swings are getting larger. I’ve seen this story before.
We discuss all of this and a lot more.
This is the video recording of the February 2020 Conference Call.
*NOTE: This Post and Video was originally intended for Premium Members of Allstarcharts Only. But due to the circumstances, we have unlocked it for everyone to watch and download the slides. We feel this can be used for educational purposes moving forward. Thank you for understanding.
This week I sat down with Irusha Peiris of Investor's Business Daily to talk markets and life lessons.
I was invited on to the Investing with IBD Podcast where we discussed the current market environment, including US and International equities. We talked about interest rates and their intermarket relationships with other asset classes like currencies and commodities. Most importantly, in my opinion, I lay out 4 very critical levels, in 4 indexes specifically, that I think will be the biggest hurdles to jump over in order for stocks to continue higher.
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I discuss all the reasons why we're buying bonds right now instead of stocks and commodities. The big point here for me is that it's not just one chart. There is no single holy grail suggesting we buy bonds. This is a weight of the evidence conclusion. It's not one chart, it's hundreds of them all pointing to the exact same thing: Sell stocks and Buy bonds!
This week I saw two different charts floating around that I thought deserved a second look based on how they were presented and what their ultimate conclusion was.
The first has to deal with the underperformance of the Equal-Weighted S&P 500 Index, while the second looks at High Dividend Factor ETFs that have gone off the beaten path.
I can't believe I'm publishing the 100th Episode of this podcast that I started in the summer of 2017. My first guest ever was Ralph Acampora! I mean, how could it not be right? Since then I've had the privilege of interviewing Portfolio Managers, Traders, Analysts, Best Selling Authors and even a World Series of Poker Champion! People all over the world have approached me how much they've learned from listening to the podcasts. It's been an amazing experience for me all around.
We've had a heck of a run in stocks since the summer, and now I think it's time for a break, at least at the index level. Remember, regardless of overall market conditions there will still always be some stocks going up and some going down. In fact, I think Utilities see some outperformance here and I listed which stocks we want to own. So far they're working.
Anyway, so why the new defensive position? Well, the things we said needed to happen for us to pull back are starting to happen. It's really as simple as that.
My big question coming into this weekend was what should we make of the action in Utilities lately and what does it mean for Bonds?
Utilities are making new all-time highs on an absolute basis, posing this question on Twitter: "So is the breakout in Utilities to new all-time highs a signal that a Bond breakout is coming, or is it simply a bi-product of overwhelming demand for Equities?
This got a lot of attention and responses, so I thought it'd be worthwhile to quickly outline what I'm watching in Utilities and the Bond market over the next few weeks.
In late August we started to see some signs of a potential bottom forming in Commodities as they approached long-term support with momentum diverging and in October we finally got a breakout.
Today that breakout in the Thomson Reuters CRB Commodity Continuous Index remains intact and the trend in Commodities as an asset class has shifted from one we want to be selling rips to one that we're buying dips.
From an intermarket perspective, there are a lot of signals we've discussed that support higher Commodity prices such as the AUD/USD and CAD/USD breakouts, and today I want to share three more data points that have shown up in the last few weeks.
This week on the podcast I'm thrilled to have Quint Tatro join me as our guest. I've been following his work for a long time and have always appreciated his technical approach to managing portfolios at his advisory firm Joule Financial. This was a great conversation where Quint walks us through how he got to Technical Analysis in the first place and how he applies those methods on a daily basis. We went over the overall stock market and how he wants to overweight International Stocks and Emerging markets heading into 2020. He also likes Gold bigger picture here and the mining stocks that come a long with it. I really enjoyed this one. Give it a listen!
