Earlier this month we outlined the "Five Bull Market Barometers" we're watching to identify the beginning of a new bull market in stocks.
In this post, we'll update those charts without going into as much detail as to why they're important. So if you haven't read our initial post linked above, we'd encourage you to check it out.
With that said, let's jump in and see how these charts have developed since.
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.
Yesterday in our Monthly Conference Call we discussed relative strength in detail and how we're using it to identify opportunities in the current market environment.
Today we wrote a detailed post expanding on our thought process, which we'd highly encourage you to read before continuing with this post.
In this post, we're going to outline several market-neutral trades we think are actionable today.
During Tuesday's Members-Only Conference Call we discussed not wanting to be aggressively long or short stocks on an absolute basis. Our Five Bull Market Barometers continue to suggest this is a choppy, messy environment where we need to be very selective when putting capital to work. Cash/patience and uncorrelated trades like Gold continue to work for those who have the ability to stay out of the equity market.
Not everyone has that luxury though. Many fund managers have a mandate to be long stocks regardless of the market environment. Some may have the ability to short stocks against their exposure, but many are "long-only" and need to outperform in weak markets by owning the stocks that are going down less.
Yesterday in our Monthly Conference Call we discussed our preference for market-neutral and uncorrelated trades given the choppy environment that continues for stocks on an absolute basis.
With that said, today we're taking a look at a stock with clearly defined risk and a heavily skewed reward/risk on the long side.
JC summed up our present view on US Equities perfectly during this week's Conference Call:
"There are stocks we want to buy, and there are stocks we want to sell," he told Premium Members on Monday night.
Some areas, particularly the secular leaders coming into the selloff, continue to trend aggressively higher while others refuse to participate in any meaningful upside.
A great example of this is illustrated by contrasting the chart of the Dow Jones Transports (DJT) to what we consider the "New Dow Theory" Average, the PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX).
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.
Earlier this month we outlined the "Five Bull Market Barometers" we're watching to identify the beginning of a new bull market in stocks.
In this post, we'll update those charts without going into as much detail as to why they're important. So if you haven't read our initial post linked above, we'd encourage you to check it out.
With that said, let's jump in and see how these charts have developed since.
This week's Mystery Chart was a simple yet pivotal one... it was a ratio chart of Stocks vs Treasury Bonds.
With stocks struggling at resistance this week and Treasuries meandering beneath all-time highs, both appear to be at key inflection points.
Making things even more interesting is that the S&P 500 (SPY) relative to 20+ Year Treasury Bonds (TLT) ratio is also at a key level of interest. It is make-or-break time for these two asset classes so let's dive in and see what's going on.
Breadth divergences from earlier this year took a while to confirm, but once they did we saw considerable downside.
My Chart Summit Presentation was on how I use statistics and scans to visualize market internals for insight on breadth and relative strength. I used tables from our Weekly Momentum Reports in January and February to illustrate the clear deterioration in participation taking place at the time despite the major indexes grinding to new highs.
In this post, we’ll do a similar exercise and use stats to analyze whether breadth has been improving or deteriorating in Global Equity Markets over the past month.
