I was in Las Vegas this past week for a bunch of meetings and conferences. There was a lot going on in that city. There were traders and analysts at every hotel on the strip. It was really cool to see old friends and, of course, meet new ones. I personally found myself in a half dozen hotels arguing about markets and seeing a bunch of live music. Check out this video I shot at the Santana show at Mandalay Bay.
On Thursday afternoon I was hanging out at Bally's with David Keller talking about Stocks, Bonds, Gold, Copper, Sector Rotation, Market Breadth, Sentiment and the current market conditions. This one was short and sweet but we covered a lot:
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 late August we took a simplified look at the Bond market and discussed the potential for mean reversion lower (Rates higher), but that the market remained choppy and we should adhere to strict risk management to avoid getting run over on the short side.
Choppiness continued, but Bonds have sold off a bit.
So what now? Let's take a comprehensive look at Bonds and how we're approaching them into year-end.
On October 26th I had the privilege of speaking at the Trade Ideas 2019 Summit in San Diego. It was a great opportunity to share our views, but more importantly, meet a ton of new people from all walks of life and hear their different perspectives. I had an absolute blast.
Last year JC presented at the same conference, outlining our very bearish thesis for Equities. This year my tone was the exact opposite!
I only had thirty minutes, but I ran through nearly 100 slides of Equities, Commodities, and Interest Rates, outlining our bull case for Equities.
The full video is available below and you can email info@allstarcharts.com if you'd like the full slide deck. Hope you enjoy!
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:
Stocks are still trying to break out of this massive range since early 2018. After some selling early this week, the range is still intact. I think this chart of the Global 100 Index tells the story best:
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I make the bear case for US Stocks. I think we've been pretty clear about the fact that we believe stocks resolve this consolidation since 2018 higher, not lower. But I always think it's important to take the other side and consider the alternative. What will the market environment most likely look like if we're wrong, and we should be selling stocks rather than buying them. I think we brought up some good points here.
We look at a lot of intermarket relationships and try to analyze the same things, but from different perspectives. It's all part of the weight of the evidence approach that we so often preach. Today we're focusing in on the relative strength (or weakness) in Consumer Staples as a heads up for the next move in the US Stock Market.
Consumer Staples are funny bunch. Think about it like this: regardless of how bad the economy might get, as a society we're still going to brush our teeth, wash our dishes, smoke cigarettes and drink beers. Those are Consumer Staples. They tend to be less volatile and underperform when stocks in general are going higher, but outperform when stocks are selling off, for the same reasons.
