From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

In today's post, we’re going to do an update on some of our favorite and most essential intermarket indicators. We’ve also updated our risk checklist so we can discuss the changes that have occurred over the past week or so.

Are market participants embracing more or less risk these days? 

We’ll get there.

We've been obnoxious about our theme that this remains a messy environment for stocks, which is nothing but classic "year two" bull market behavior.

But guess what: That’s just what it is right now. You have to play the cards you’re dealt, and right now they’re not the best. This is particularly true for trend-followers like ourselves.

Let’s talk about why.

Our custom “Risk-On” and “Risk-Off” indexes have been a perfect illustration of the 2021 market environment.

This is what a hot mess looks like… and it’s true for both custom indexes as well as the ratio of the two!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We have been adamant about our view that we are in a rather messy environment. For this reason, we've been approaching markets with caution for months now.

Up until earlier this year when risk assets began consolidating in sideways patterns, it had been nothing but blue skies and new highs.

When the weather report is sunny, the water is calm, and the sky is clear, we know the weight of the evidence is with the bulls and we can focus our attention on finding the best opportunities in the strongest areas as ways to express our thesis.

But that's just not where we find ourselves today. The current forecast is cloudy with a chance of rain. And it's already been overcast for months!

And when the outlook is murky, as it is now, we want to take a step back and really weigh the evidence that's in front of us. We need to stay up on incoming data points and monitor how markets react with so many charts currently at key levels of interest.

Forget the hedge funds. You want to crush the suits?

Well, they still make sell side analysts wear suits and come into the office.

It's wild, I know.

Sell side analysts have worse herd behavior habits than your average investor. They have their cushy jobs (a few of them still do anyway). They get to tell their friends and family that they work on wall street, because some people still think that's "cool".

But the truth is, it's our job to take advantage of them. It's a lonely and dying business and they're not having any fun. In fact, they're finding it really difficult to run their antiquated valuation models on today's business. It's hilarious to watch them try.

Now, making fun of the situation doesn't get us paid. BUT, taking advantage of their conflicts of interest certainly can, if done correctly.

You see, they have families, kids in private school, expensive mortgages and used to nice vacations. It's a lifestyle. Their wives don't work and it's up to daddy to make sure the big check comes home every month, regardless of the cost.

This is our ASC Research Q1 2021 Playbook.

The first section dives deep into the US Stock Market and Market breadth, then we discuss the International Markets and specific Factors around the world. Next we go into U.S. Sectors and the best looking Industry Groups. In the second half of the report, we dive into the FICC space (Fixed Income, Commodities & Currencies) and their Intermarket Relationships. Finally we finish up with Cryptos, Options and overall Market Sentiment.

You can skip right to the trade ideas here if you'd like, or give the full report a read!

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

The weight of the evidence continues to overwhelmingly lie in favor of the bulls.

The major indices are above important levels and are well on their way to achieving our targets. We're seeing sector rotation into offensive, cyclical areas of the market, and away from defensive, which is all confirming these new highs.

Commodities are showing incredible strength in the face of extreme positioning, reflecting the control buyers have in these markets.

The stocks in the Dow Jones Transportation Average are getting the bid that they needed for this overall market to continue its march higher. Going back and doing the work, it's hard for stocks as a group to keep ripping without rotation into some of the underperforming areas. Transports were right near the top of our underperformer list for a long time.

This is no longer the case. We've already talked about how Transports were the best performermers in the world for the month of July. This weekend we also pointed to the change in trend relative to the S&P500.

Today, let's look deeper into the components of the Dow Jones Transportation Average. Remember there are 20 of them and consist of Airlines, Rails, Trucks, Logistics etc. This chart plots the drawdown from 52week highs on the x-axis and the y-axis represents the performance since June 5th, which was the former highest weekly close for the index:

Click on Chart to Zoom in

This is our ASC Research Q3 Playbook.

The first section dives deep into the US Stock Market, and the second half covers International Stock Markets and FICC (Fixed Income, Commodities & Currencies).

You can skip right to the trade ideas here if you'd like, or give the full report a read!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

It's been a close your eyes and buy anything market, particularly the past few weeks as even the most hard-hit areas experienced monster rallies. That appears to be changing this week with the biggest 1-day down move in the S&P since mid-March as well as the largest single-day spike in volatility since February 2018.

Last week we highlighted the healthy rotation into cyclicals. We pointed out that the secular laggards and areas that had suffered serious structural damage were now outperforming, and by quite a wide margin.

We used this scatter plot of our Dow Jones Industry universe to illustrate this price action.