This concept of new 52-week highs can be somewhat confusing. I get it. How does it work? If we make new highs and the list of new highs doesn't confirm, do we short everything? How do we know if and when the internals of the market have confirmed or diverged from whatever the price of the index itself is doing? These days, it seems like people have more questions than answers. So today we'll take a look at what's going on and see if we can try to work through it together.
It's the end of the month so you know what that means: Brand new freshly completed monthly candlesticks for us to review. While I normally use weekly charts to get structural perspective on markets and then daily charts for tactical purposes, the monthly chart review is done at the end of each month to help identify the primary trends around the market. This is for us who want to avoid the day to day noise surrounding politics or the Fed or whatever news story is being sensationalized this week.
This is a global market environment. The S&P500 goes up and down based on the collective money flow from investors all over the world, not just within the borders of the United States. There are some people still fighting the civil war who simply don't understand this concept. US Stocks don't move up and down based on what is happening in America. What happens in the United States politically, economically, tax-wise, etc is just a tiny tiny piece of a humongous puzzle. This is a global market environment and the sooner you recognize that the bigger the advantage you will have over others who have not yet accepted this concept.
Even if you only trade US Stocks, or stocks local to where you live, understanding what is happening globally is essential to recognizing the direction of the underlying trend for the asset. And this trend identification is step 1 to market analysis. Today I went through every stock market index in the world to see if there is more good or more bad out there. Here are a few stand outs:
My weekly run through the S&P500 components is one of my favorite parts of the work week. I put on some music and go through all 1000+ charts. Remember we use the weekly charts to get structural perspective and then the daily timeframes to define more tactical opportunities: 2 charts for each of the 500 stocks. I then break down the index into 11 Sectors and run my analysis of stocks one sector at a time. This way it helps give me a better feel for that particular area within the entire stock market. To take it one step further, I then break down each of the 11 sector workbooks of charts into sub-sectors. So for example, in the "Energy Sector" there will be 4 sub-sectors: Integrateds, Services, Exploration/Production and Refiners.
We live in a world of if/then statements. That's just the way it is. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or next month or next year. But that's okay because no one else does either. That whole lie about "uncertainty" is just that: a lie. There is always uncertainty. That's the point of all this. So we do our best to put together a road map filled with if/then statements. If the market does this, then we will do this. If that market does that, then we'll have to do that. This is the case today, it's been no different in the past and will likely be the same in the future. I don't know of any other way to manage risk responsibly.
Most of you who know me already know that I incorporate a top/down, weight-of-the-evidence approach. It's not just 1 chart or 1 indicator that says to be long or short the stock market. It doesn't work that way. For me, I put in the work, weigh ALL of the evidence, and then put together a thesis. From there we then look to execute. Since March, however, a more neutral approach towards stocks has been my big theme. As we come into May, I see no evidence that suggests changing that strategy. Cash heavy still makes sense until the data changes and points to allocating that cash once again, long or short.
Today I want to go over a chart that I think the US Stock Market bulls are going to love. To me, it is potentially the most bullish chart in the entire world.
Yesterday I kept a Diary throughout my entire process of reviewing the components of the S&P500. Many of you have written back with such nice things about that. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think that in order to get the most out the research, it really helps to understand where I'm coming. This helps in the execution process, which is why we're here right? To make money in the market for ourselves and/or for our clients.
Today I felt that a nice supplement to yesterday's S&P500 work is a chart that shows what the S&P500 Equally weighted Index is doing relative to the S&P500 Market-cap weighted index. To me this is a good measure of whether or not we're seeing broad-based participation or if it's just the mega-cap names carrying the weight.
We're in the market to make money. It should not matter whether that money is made in Energy stocks, Technology, U.S. Equities, European or Chinese. The point is to find opportunities as they come, wherever they come from. I think as we progress into 2017 it is becoming very clear to me that we need to be focused on what is going on in India. Whether we're looking at the currency or the stock market, something interesting is happening here and I think it would be irresponsible of us to ignore.
One of the most important tools we have as technicians is the ability to measure momentum. Remember, buy side fund managers are obsessed with looking for stocks and assets showing momentum. They hate sitting in things that aren't doing anything. Whether you're a buy side fund manager or not, it's important to think this way. Opportunity cost (where else you can invest that money) is important too. Looking for stocks with bullish momentum characteristics is something we want to do when markets are in an uptrend. When momentum starts to fade, it's a heads up that price is likely to follow.
Today I want to focus particular attention on the breadth of momentum. We want to approach this as a market of stocks, not a stock market. There are many components that drive these indexes, sometime more than others depending on the index. We can focus on particular areas like energy or financials, or different market caps large or small. I also want to know how momentum in the entire market is doing: Are we seeing positive momentum characteristics or negative ones?
It's hard to ignore certain market moves that tend to be very rare. Bullish outside days that engulf the prior period are one of those. I think this is exactly what we saw this week in the AMEX Arline Index and it is something we want to respect. This is especially the case if you consider where this bullish reversal took place, just below important support.
For me it's not just about buying a group of stocks, but about buying the strongest members of that group. I am a firm believer that by erring on the long side of relative strength or erring on the short side of relative weakness, the odds of a continuation in trend is much greater than the odds of a reversal. Therefore, there is a higher probability of success by following trend, rather than trying to fight trends. So today I want to talk about how we're going to take this top/down approach and apply it to find profitable trades this month in Energy stocks.
As I mentioned recently, I've been working with some new technology and it's allowing me to easily share analysis in a much more detailed way from a sub-sector perspective. In the first top/down review last week we looked at the Media stocks. Today I want to take a deep dive into the precious metals market and really drill down how we want to approach this market. There is more sensitivity when it comes to participants in this market so knowing that is advantageous. We want to 1) recognize this added sensitivity and 2) try to take advantage of that for profit.
