You guys know that I prefer to incorporate more of a weight-of-the-evidence approach to markets rather than basing my decision making on a single indicator. We look at stock markets all over the world to find themes, both bullish and bearish, and then take advantage of them within U.S. markets. I then take a similar approach and go sector by sector in the U.S., including a series of sub-sectors, to break it down even further and find themes within the U.S. As you guys well know, the reason we were bullish since January was because of the weight-of-the-evidence internationally, not because of what we saw in the S&P500 or Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Today I conducted an experiment where I went sector by sector doing my normal annotations and note-taking, but this time I asked myself 3 questions for each sector/sub-sector:
Precious metals are a sensitive subject in some circles. Discussions about gold or silver tend to bring out more anger and craziness than other assets. As someone who couldn't care less about what we're trading, Gold, Apple, Bonds, Australian Dollars or Go Pro, to me it's just letters and math. I find it kind of funny when people get extra sensitive about a specific asset. Precious metals bring out some of the most hilarious commentary.
Today, I want to break down Gold and Precious Metals from many different angles in order to put it into context from both a structural perspective and a shorter-term tactical outlook.
Every month we host a conference call for All Star Charts Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.
This month's Conference Call will be held Thursday February 11, 2016 at 7PM ET
In this month's premium members conference call, we will discuss the following topics:
- Can we still get a counter-trend rally before getting down to 1720 in the S&P500?
- A deep dive look at the Bond Market and how to profit from it
- Why Emerging Markets will keep outperforming
- Crude Oil and Gold - What do we do with these now?
- Amazon has been a great short, but what do we do with these momentum stocks today?
As always, we'll leave as much time for Q&A as possible.
One of the most valuable tools that we have as market participants is in taking the sum of the parts to help come up with a final conclusion. While we all talk about what the Dow did yesterday or what it’s done year-to-date, it is easy to forget that there are 30 companies driving this popular U.S. stock market benchmark. By going through each of these 30 stocks, we can get a better feel for the market itself rather than just analyzing the performance of the index. To me, it’s the combination of the two that seems to be the best approach.
All of the 30 Dow Components have just been updated in the Chartbook, and here are my notes on the results:
The U.S. Stock market and most of its sectors continue to rally. As happy as we are to see this, and as much as we expect this to continue through February, these are only counter-trend rallies within larger structural declines. The good news is that counter-trend rallies in bear markets historically tend to be the most powerful kind of rallies. I think there is still room to the upside in many different sectors with very well-defined risk.
All of the charts have been updated on the Chartbook. Here are my notes for this week's sector review:
As you guys know I started to turn bullish towards the stock market over the last couple of weeks for the first time since last October. Now, I want to make sure that we all understand that this is just a counter-trend rally within an ongoing bear market. Regardless, this is still a rally that I would like to participate in on the long side and every day
I am finding more and more opportunities to buy beaten down names, just for a trade, of course.