From the Brazilian Real and Australian Dollar to the Turkish Lira, many global currencies have been gaining significant traction relative to the US Dollar over the past several weeks and months. These currency moves have also had significant impacts on the equity markets of their respective countries as they tend to be positively correlated.
Last week the New Zealand Dollar joined that group by breaking out across multiple timeframes.
I think there is a nice shorting opportunity in General Electric that we can take advantage of this month. There's nothing better than making money when a stock is falling. The reason is because stocks tend to move a lot faster on the way down, than on their way up. It's the old, Escalator Up & Elevator Down behavior.
The way I see it, $GE hit our upside target of $31 last November, so there's been no reason to own it. This target is based on the 161.8% Fibonacci extension of the massive consolidation throughout 2013-2015. Here is a weekly chart showing prices getting up there, pulling back in December and January, and now more recently rallying back up towards that $31 level and beyond:
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to put all social media stocks into one category. We do our best with ETFs like $SOCL, but they can be heavily skewed by certain stocks and it ignores others with smaller market caps. Also, what does a company LinkedIn have to do with Yelp or Yahoo? I think we need to be careful grouping them into just one category, and keep in mind that they are all individuals with their own problems as well as their own unique positive qualities.
The reason I bring this up is because yesterday afternoon, Michael Santoli tweeted out a mystery chart asking followers whether it was a buy or sell:
It's been a while since I laid out a bunch of short ideas. As you guys know, I've been really bullish since late January. But hey, upside targets get hit, sentiment shifts, and things eventually change. Here are a list of Dow Components that I think are good shorting opportunities today:
The financial sector of the S&P 500 has been a major laggard over the last few years and 2016 is no exception with the sector down roughly 6% YTD.
The five year daily ratio chart of XLF / SPY represents this relationship. This ratio broke down out of a multi-year downtrend channel while momentum confirmed a bearish range by moving into oversold territory. These conditions, combined with the presence of a downward sloping 200 day moving average, suggest that the under-performance of financials relative to the broader market is likely to continue.
We've just witnessed one of the most epic rallies in the stock market that we've seen in a long time. Remember, this has been dominated by global indexes, particularly Emerging Markets, not U.S. Stocks. We could not be happier to see this rally progress so well as we've been pounding the table to be long since late January. By mid-February, the U.S. and other developed markets put in their bottoms and started to play catch up to the rest of the world. But the underperformance of the U.S. has continued anyway.
Today's Chart Of The Week represents what could potentially be the start of a major structural improvement for U.S. Stocks:
We've been pretty neutral the majority of the U.S. Stock Market indexes over the past couple of weeks since they first starting hitting our upside targets. Some of them, like the Nasdaq100 and Mid-cap400 had yet to reach out upside objectives, but we are approaching those now. I will argue, though, that the developments we've seen are constructive, both in price behavior and in the breadth itself.
Here is what I think we need to keep in mind with each of the major Indexes. We're using only bar charts today in order to put extra emphasis on price for this particular exercise:
From late January until today, there have been tactical breakouts in currencies of countries with significant commodity exposure relative to the US Dollar. This has provided a tailwind to a number of emerging market equities that have subsequently followed through to the upside. Many of these equity markets are concentrated in Latin America, but areas like South Africa, Africa, Australia, and Turkey have benefited as well.
Whether or not these tactical moves will continue and develop into long-term trends is entirely unknown, but the risk/reward in the US Dollar/Brazilian Real looks particularly skewed in favor of the bears here.
Although Turkey has already rallied 25% from the January 20th lows, the weight of evidence suggests this may be the start of a much larger move to the upside on an absolute and relative basis.
Structurally Turkey has been in a downtrend since a failed breakout near its all-time highs of 77.50 in early 2013. In August of 2015 prices broke below long-term support at 40 and have since been building a multi-month base below that level. Last week prices were able to break and close above it, while also closing above the downtrend line from the 2015 highs.
During broad rallies in the equity markets, both in the US and globally, I look for those names / sectors / indices that are not participating to the upside, as those are normally the ones that lead to the downside once the market moves lower. One of the names that caught my eye during the rally off the February lows is Pfizer.
Before getting into the analysis of Pfizer, I think it's important to point out the weak relative performance of the sector it belongs to.
The roughly 5 year daily chart of the ratio XLV / SPY shows the under-performance that's been occurring in Healthcare stocks relative to the S&P 500 since mid-2015. Recently this ratio broke down below its primary uptrend line from the 2012 lows while momentum remains in a bearish range, suggesting that this under-performance is likely to continue.
Last week a structural breakout in AUD/USD was confirmed. Whether you trade currencies or not, it's worth paying attention to because of its implications from an inter-market perspective.
From a structural point of view, the Australian Dollar has been in a downtrend since 2012, with the selling really accelerating in late 2014. Recently this pair met its downside target at support near 0.68-0.69 and began consolidating as momentum diverged positively. Last week, prices broke above the downtrend line from the November 2014 highs to confirm the bullish divergence and breakout. This development suggests that as long as prices remain above the downtrend line, this market is likely headed toward prior support near 0.8075-0.81.
