From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, June 12, 2020:

Every week we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Last week was a big one for the bears as most risk-assets sold off aggressively to end the week after a strong start.

Many major Indexes in both International and Domestic Equity Markets printed bearish island reversal patterns, most of which occurred at logical levels of overhead supply. Read our post about it here.

We also just wrote about how the market's secular leaders are holding up best since market internals peaked about two weeks ago. We're going to use our US Index and Sector tables below to highlight the noteworthy relative strength from these areas amid the recent market weakness.

Let's take it from the top and begin with our US Index ETF table.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We’ve written extensively about the split market we’ve been in for the better part of the year, as the same leaders coming into the Q1 crash emerged as the strongest areas coming out of it. Over the past 3-4 weeks we’ve seen some major mean reversion and much-needed participation from the cyclical sectors which have been lagging for years now.

This is constructive rotation and a major positive for bulls as we’re going to need to see this type of breadth expansion if this rally is to have legs.

While this is an encouraging development, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed at all. With all the focus on Financials, Industrials and Energy recently, Tech seems to have been forgotten a bit, but it’s still by far the best game in town.

These are the registration details for the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Monday June 15th at 7PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Monday:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, June 5, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This was a big week for market bulls as a myriad of consolidations resolved to the upside while the powerhouse Nasdaq 100 $QQQ finally became the first major index to reclaim its all-time highs. The only assets to post negative returns this week were the usual "safe-havens" such as Treasuries, Yen, and Precious Metals. Everything else was green. How's that for improving risk-appetite?

In this post, we'll highlight that this broadening participation and flight towards risk-assets is more than just a one-week phenomenon. We've seen this type of price behavior in some asset classes for over a month now.

Here's a trade I like a lot right now.

It's in the right sector. The trend is in the right direction. And Momentum is confirming it all.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 29, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This was a special week as Friday marked the end of May which means fresh monthly candlestick data. Analyzing these long-term monthly charts every several weeks is a great exercise as it forces us to take a step back and identify the structural trends that are in place.

As such, this week’s theme is the continued outperformance over both the short and long-term from those areas sporting the strongest primary uptrends.

Tech $XLK is by far the best performing sector over the trailing year. It is also the 2nd best over the past month and quarter, behind Communications $XLC and Health Care $XLV, respectively. Not surprisingly, these same sectors are also the next best performers over the trailing year.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Sentiment has not been good for Chinese Equities with a handful of recent sanctions adding to the general uncertainty around China-US relations. For the most part, we're seeing this reflected in price as the Shanghai Composite and iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) are trading at multi-month lows relative to the S&P 500.

Interestingly enough, the area being hit hardest with negative headlines is one of the few bright spots in China's market right now... Technology and Internet stocks.

In this post, we take a look at the improving relative strength from this group and offer trade ideas in some of its leading stocks.

Here is the ratio chart of the Kraneweb Chinese Internet ETF (KWEB) vs the S&P 500 (SPY) which we've been writing about since November.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 22, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This week’s main theme is risk-on action from beaten-down areas which we'll highlight in our US Index and Factor ETF tables, below.

We're putting a lot of emphasis on risk-appetite measures right now in order to provide insight into how the recent rangebound activity in Equity and Bond markets is likely to resolve itself.

The most basic way to assess risk-tolerance is to compare the performance of risk-on vs risk-off assets. As such, this post will focus on how the offensive vs defensive areas of various markets are acting right now.

Click table to enlarge view.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Yesterday, we wrote about the divergence in both structural and tactical trends between Dow Transports and Semiconductors. The bottom line is that Dow Transports (DJT), which is the traditional "Dow Theory" average, has been getting smoked relative to the "New Dow Theory" average, the Semiconductor Index (SOX).

While we don't know whether or not this can persist indefinitely or if these divergences will soon resolve themselves, we do know that Semiconductors remain one of the secular leaders and are thus an area we want to continue to bet on from the long side.

In this post, we'll outline some Trade Ideas in our favorite Semiconductor names.

Something all of these setups have in common is that they are exhibiting impressive relative strength vs the broader market. They also all resolved to fresh highs recently, which gives us a well-defined risk management level to trade against.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 15, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This week's main theme is that the strong continue to get stronger and vice versa, which we'll highlight in our Industry and Sector ETF tables, below.

Notice how the top three performers this week also happen to be the only Industry ETFs that are positive over the trailing 3-month period?

Gold Miners (GDX), Biotech (IBB), and Internet (FDN) posting positive 3-month returns may not sound like much but is actually quite impressive as it means these areas have already taken out their highs from just before the broader market peaked and collapsed in February.

Click table to enlarge view.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Last month we wrote about the lackluster move from some of the cyclical sectors off of their March lows, particularly Industrials and Financials.

We continue to see weakness out of these areas over both long and short-term timeframes as Financials are pressing on all-time lows relative to the S&P 500 and Industrials just made a fresh relative 20-year low.

In this post, we'll take a look at these underperforming areas and share some trade ideas to express our bearish thesis.

First, let's take a look at the long-term relative weakness we just mentioned.

Click chart to enlarge view.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 8, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Many of the relative trends in stocks that have been in place for a long time have come into question recently as they're showing signs of maturing due in part to the change in leadership we wrote about this week.

In this post, we'll highlight two structural intermarket themes that have remained robust throughout this tumultuous time for equity markets.

The first relative trend that hasn't slowed down at all is the relentless outperformance of the US over the rest of the world. Our first table shows the Wilshire 5000 (DWC) dominating every Global Index over just about every timeframe, from this week to the trailing year.

Click table to enlarge view.