In today's post, I want to outline two "trash to treasure" trade setups that are low probability in nature but offer a ridiculously skewed reward/risk at current levels.
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk the relative performance of stocks. When assets are in strong uptrends, they not only perform on an absolute basis, but they tend to outperform their alternatives. With new highs in the S&P500 last month, we've seen nothing but lower highs relative to both Gold and US Treasury Bonds. In fact, on a relative basis, the S&P500 is actually down to its late December 2018 lows. Will they hold or confirm a massive distributive top? I think the resolution will tell us a lot about the strength of the current stock market.
When I go through my charts, I see all kinds of different trends, patterns and consolidations around the world. It really depends on what I'm looking at. However, one area that has been a consistent outperformer is in Medical Device stocks. The way I see it, these are just Tech stocks stuck in the bodies of Healthcare names. So our theme of "bullish tech" makes sense, even though on paper they're Healthcare stocks.
Here is a chart of the Medical Device & Equipment Index $IHI relative to the S&P500. This one goes from the lower left to the upper right. We call those Uptrends:
Tuesday's Mystery Chart is one of my favorite charts right now, so thank you all for your feedback and participation.
Almost every one of you said you were selling the stock in question as it put in a failed breakout, while a handful of you were doing nothing and buying the subsequent breakout with me.
Assets in the strongest uptrends not only do well on an absolute basis, they tend to outperform relative to their alternatives as well. In the case of the S&P500, with new all-time highs last month, we've just seen lower highs relative to both Gold and US Treasury Bonds. This is NOT evidence of a strong uptrend.
The question today seems clear to me: Is the underperformance of stocks relative to other assets "The Divergence" that we'll point to in the future as the heads up that something was changing? Or will we get relative rotation back into equities and this was just a temporary blip while stocks consolidated their massive 2016-2017 gains?
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about US Small-caps and the underperformance we've seen out of anything non-large-cap since 2018. We are now down to levels not seen since early 2016 when Small-caps started their outperformance vs Large-caps, which is where stocks bottomed after the 2015 cyclical bear market. Is this where the turn begins? Let's walk through it together and see if we can figure it out!
Last week we wrote a post for our US subscribers to highlight several "big bases" that we are watching for potential breakouts.
The principles surrounding why we like "big bases" can be applied to Indian stocks as well, so we wanted to write a quick post outlining our logic and providing examples that may become actionable in the near future.
We saw some late week strength in US Stocks for two consecutive weeks. When buyers have had the opportunity to buy stocks on weakness, have they shown up to do so? I would argue yes.
That doesn't mean that we're not below overhead supply in most sectors and indexes. There are a few exceptions but let's get right into it and see what's going on.
Here is the video from my BNN Bloomberg interview this week. They asked me if I thought the media was making too big of a deal out of an inversion of the yield curve and I agreed that of course they did. That's what the media does, irresponsibly exaggerate things that don't need to be exaggerated at the expense of their audience. I'm happy to come on TV to bring some sense of reality to the conversation. Someone has to. In this video we discuss the ongoing Cyclical Bear Market in stocks and what we're waiting for to confirm that a new Cyclical Bull is getting started.
What is the best chart in the world right now? I don't know. I guess that really depends on your time horizon, risk tolerance and overall market goals. These are different for all of us.
Today, I want to share what I think are collectively the 120 best charts. The way I see, there is no ONE chart that can tell today's story. But as a unit, these 120 slides give us a good look at the current market environment.
Tuesday's Mystery Chart is one of my favorite charts right now, so thank you all for your feedback and participation.
I received a lot of answers, but I'd say 1/3 of you were buying a breakout, 1/3 were fading this strength, and the last 1/3 were yawning and off to find something more exciting.
