It's stupidly easy to get swept away in narratives.

From the constant buzz about ETFs to the rise of random meme coins and the infamous halvening, it's hard to escape the storytelling.

It's amusing how people confidently share fundamental narratives during bullish markets, only to resort to drawing lines when sellers enter the scene.

Understanding why a market is trending is normal, but is it really helpful?

Not so much.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Whenever we want to gauge animal spirits in the precious metals space, we resort to our trusty intermarket ratios.

Two weeks ago in our Gold report, we covered the notable bounce we were witnessing in the Silver/Gold ratio, pointing to brewing risk appetite within this space. And this week, we outlined a bullish trade in the iShares Silver ETF off the back of this recent momentum.

But when we take this relationship one step further, we see a similar situation in the relationship between Silver and Gold mining stocks.

Here's a long-term weekly chart of this ratio:

Credit spreads have tightened a good deal since October.

I can't help but think this is just more classic bull market behavior.

As the major US equity indices have been rallying into year end, we've seen confirmation out of a number of credit ratios we track to gauge risk appetite within fixed income markets. Specifically, the the iShares High Yield Corporate Bond ETF $HYG is trading at 52-week highs relative to the iShares 3-7yr Treasury Bond ETF $IEI.

This ratio ultimately gives us an inverted chart of credit spreads. Check it out:

Notice how both the S&P 500 and the HYG/IEI ratio are pressing back through their summer highs. 

It's hard to have a bull market in equities if the bond market is positioning defensively. Think about it; the players in the market with the deepest pockets require an incredible amount of liquidity.

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

We've been all over this one.

Two weeks ago, we couldn't help but discuss the impressive move out of the silver/gold ratio, pointing to risk appetite in the precious metals space.

Now, gold's crazy little cousin is pressing up against new 52-week highs.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

For the longest time, investors in the United States have been rewarded for their home country bias and their overexposure to large-caps and growth stocks.

The secular trend of underperformance from international equities relative to the United States commenced over 15 years ago. Many investors have simply never seen stocks outside the US outperform over any material timeframe.

It's not a matter of impossibility; rather, our recency bias tends to mistake unfamiliarity for the extraordinary.

A regime of sustained value outperformance isn't isolated to the realm of fantasy. It was only last year that holding growth over value was nothing short of opportunity cost, while international equities outpaced their US counterparts through Q4 and into the new year.

Recently, Meb Faber joined us on the morning show, where he discussed the topic of international investing. He argued that this is the best time in history to make the value trade, both domestically and internationally.

Cryptocurrencies are every technical analyst's dream.

No gaps.

24/7 markets.

No circuit breakers.

Countless technical tools.

No arbitrary fundamental models.

No government intervention.

Pure supply and demand at work.

Without getting too philosophical, there's a trend in traditional markets toward the democratization of financial information. Nowadays, people have almost the same access to data and platforms as the bigger guys. There are projects like Koyfin that are leveling the playing field and giving the small guy opportunities they didn't have just a few decades ago.

Have you ever held a beach ball underwater and pressed down?

You can feel the pressure on your arms - the beachball is trying everything to float back up.

So what happens when you let go? It jumps into the air!

Once that pressure holding it down eases, it has nowhere to go but up.

The market is the exact same.

When everything's selling indiscriminately, we want to look for the sectors, stocks, or in this case, cryptocurrencies that are bucking the trend and pushing up against your arms.

So what's going to happen when that selling, that force holding the beach ball gives up?

It's gonna shoot higher!

That stock or cryptocurrency closing the day higher in the face of broad distribution is likely to be the next leader when that force holding everything down subsides.

We saw this take place with Solana in August, and we know how that turned out...

Now that the market finds itself beaten and bruised over the last few weeks, we need to ask the same question - where's the relative strength?

In Monday's post, we mentioned that this would be very much a "wait and see" week as we watched Bitcoin's near-term consolidation play out.

And here's what we outlined in yesterday's note:

We’re not really expecting much more than tumbleweeds and a few winners here and there while Bitcoin’s stuck below the upper-end of this range near 47,500.

But if we see a breakout above that level, we’ll be deploying some more cash into new long positions.

It looks like we could be getting a resolution this morning, with Bitcoin trading back into the 47,000's.

For those with a shorter timeframe, the bias is higher above 47,500 toward the former crash highs of 53,000:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return tables for various 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.

We 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 and discuss the most important themes and developments currently playing out in markets all around the world.

In our last report, we discussed all the whipsaws we had been witnessing in recent weeks and noted that the next major piece of information would be the velocity of the reactions these charts made in the opposite direction.

Crypto just once again pierced a whopping $2T market cap.

It seems now more than ever that the entire space is heating up to unseen levels.

The entire asset class has ballooned to nearly 10,000 coins and tokens, all with their own individual whitepapers, goals, and communities.

Activity on the blockchain has never been higher, smart contracts and DeFi are in full swing, and now the world is beginning to pick up what NFTs are all about.

But it wasn't always like this.

All of this activity flourishing before our very own eyes stands on the shoulders of failed projects, countless crashes, and the destruction of wealth in now dead tokens.

If this asset class has taught us anything, it's to manage your damn risk.

It doesn't matter how unique the whitepaper is or the fundamental use case of the token if the market's truly coming off.

It was hilarious to see everyone talk about the fundamentals of their altcoins when things were great earlier in the year, but tried becoming technicians on the way down.

Classic market behavior.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts and Steve Strazza @sstrazza

The Crypto space just experienced its worst day since the height of the Covid crash.

Bitcoin was down over 30% on an intraday basis, while Ethereum was almost cut in half.

We see this recent action aligning Crypto with what's taking place throughout the market. Bulls have had a more challenging time in recent months, and risk assets are coming under increasing pressure. 

Speaking to this topic, here's what we outlined in a note earlier this week:

One more chart that I think is interesting is the Bitcoin / Gold ratio hitting it’s upside objective and reversing hard.

How many people are telling you to sell Bitcoin to buy Gold?

I don’t hear any at all….

If we’re below 36:1 in the ratio between Bitcoin and Gold, then we prefer Gold.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts and Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Alt Season is still very much alive and well.

In February, we did a deep dive into the wide world of crypto assets outside of Bitcoin. This turned out to be quite timely as many of these "alt-coins" have booked significant gains in the time since.

It's no longer just Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and some others. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies out there now!

As this new asset class continues to grow and blossom, we continue to pay close attention to the leadership within the Crypto complex.