From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Energy is the clear leader in the commodity markets right now. Our equally-weighted energy index is up 13.76% over the trailing month and 6.58% in the last five days.
The emerging strength from this group is supported by a rising rate environment that could be just getting started.
So, crude oil to 100 dollars and natural gas to 9?
Maybe! But before we get ahead of ourselves, there are still plenty of mixed signals and divergences that need to be resolved.
One that stands out is the lack of confirming price action between economically sensitive commodities. Let’s take a look!
Here’s a chart of Crude Oil futures, Copper futures, and Copper Miners $COPX:
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
Bond yields are breaking higher across the board. So, it’s essential to understand that some stocks do better amid rising rates, while others prosper in markets with low growth and low yields.
For instance, cyclical and value stocks should outperform in a rising rate environment.
Meanwhile, growth, tech stocks, and any long-duration assets (bonds) typically lag. They become less attractive during periods where more economically sensitive areas offer more appealing opportunities.
And we’re already seeing this rotation into the rising rate beneficiaries, while growth stocks have come under pressure in recent weeks.
In today’s post, we’ll look at market internals of these groups to see what they suggest about recent price action.
We can compare growth to cyclicals by analyzing the ratio of Large-Cap Tech $XLK to Energy $XLE.
And we can further illustrate this growth-versus-value relationship through a variety of derivatives. They all tell similar stories.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
We’re finally starting to see resolutions in the bond market.
The 30-year yield is back above 2.00%, the 10-year has reclaimed 1.40%, and the 5-year yield has cleared 1.00% for the first time since February 2020.
Now that it appears rates have picked a direction, what are the implications for the other two major asset classes, stocks and commodities?
As we highlighted last week, we want to look at cyclical and value stocks along with economically sensitive commodities, specifically energy and base metals.
And, in case you haven’t heard, higher yields should also put a bid in financials.
As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!
One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).
Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.
But the scan doesn't just end there. We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.
What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention and remove the x and y axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.
This chart can be any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes, it’s an absolute price chart. Other times, it’s on a relative basis.
It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!
The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.
While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…
So let us know what it is: Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
The US 10-year yield has made a decisive move back above 1.40% in recent sessions.
We’ve been pounding the table about this critical level for months now--and for a good reason. It’s a vital component of the global growth narrative and rotation into cyclicals.
And most investors probably aren’t prepared for it!
Yesterday, JC and Steve discussed areas that demand attention in a rising rate environment and how we should position ourselves. You can check it out here.
For starters, most currencies versus the US dollar should be beneficiaries of rising rates. This is particularly true for commodity-centric currencies like the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar, the Russian ruble, and the South African rand.
We’ve already had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it late last year and started rotating it with our flagship bottoms-up scan, “Under The Hood.”
We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps….
For about a year now, we’ve focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B. That was fun, but we think it’s time we branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.
The way we’re doing this is simple…
To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B. And it doesn’t have to be a Russell component–it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.
This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow The Flow. In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish… but NOT both.
We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients. Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.
We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades. What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind… and they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny.
Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.
By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the context of the big picture and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.
Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:
* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.
Our Top 10 report was just published. In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.
Resolutions For Rates
This could be the single most important chart in the world right now. We cannot understate this development.
We finally got a major resolution in the US 10-year yield, reclaiming that critical 1.40% level this week. And this begs the question as to what a rising rate environment might mean for investor portfolios. The first thing we know for sure is that we want to stay away from bonds, unless we’re shorting them of course. The second, and perhaps most important implication, is the renewed tailwind for cyclicals. When rates are rising, sectors like financials, industrials, materials, and energy are all typically outperforming, which is exactly what we’ve started to see in the last week.
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-based stocks.
These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft--with market caps in excess of $2T--to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.
It’s got all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we’re developing a separate universe for that, and we’ll be sharing it with you soon.
So, The Hall of Famers is easy.
We simply take our list of 100 names and then apply our technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Whether we’re talking about stocks, commodities, currencies, or even the bond market, things have been a total mess. It’s no secret, and you’re probably tired of hearing it by now.
Trust me, we’re just as tired of seeing it.
So, as these choppy conditions test our patience and discipline, why not use this opportunity to take a step back and examine where we’ve come from, where we are now, and where we’re likely headed.
In today’s post, we’re going to do just that by revisiting and analyzing some of our favorite breadth indicators and discussing what some of them are suggesting for commodities over the long run.
Let’s dig into it!
First, we need to understand that a breadth thrust isn’t a singular event. It’s a process that builds upon itself as a new bull cycle unfolds.
These thrusts in participation don’t all just happen overnight. Instead, they develop over shorter time frames at first and eventually culminate with a broad expansion in new longer-term highs.
