Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Mystery Chart, as always. Most saw that I was doing it this week and didn't even bother to try guessing, simply stating that they were buyers of this massive base breakout on any pullbacks.
Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.
This week's main theme is that the strong continue to get stronger and vice versa, which we'll highlight in our Industry and Sector ETF tables, below.
Notice how the top three performers this week also happen to be the only Industry ETFs that are positive over the trailing 3-month period?
Gold Miners (GDX), Biotech (IBB), and Internet (FDN) posting positive 3-month returns may not sound like much but is actually quite impressive as it means these areas have already taken out their highs from just before the broader market peaked and collapsed in February.
Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.
Many of the relative trends in stocks that have been in place for a long time have come into question recently as they're showing signs of maturing due in part to the change in leadership we wrote about this week.
In this post, we'll highlight two structural intermarket themes that have remained robust throughout this tumultuous time for equity markets.
The first relative trend that hasn't slowed down at all is the relentless outperformance of the US over the rest of the world. Our first table shows the Wilshire 5000 (DWC) dominating every Global Index over just about every timeframe, from this week to the trailing year.
Let's take a look at what's going on in the major asset classes.
Let's start with Bonds. Here's the US 10-Year Note Futures printing their highest monthly close in history, clearly in an uptrend. The Bond market remains in an uptrend both in the US and most markets around the globe.
Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.
This week we're highlighting the underperformance from the US using our Global Index and International ETF tables.
Click table to enlarge view.
Despite the Wilshire 5000 (DWC) closing slightly higher on the week, all major Large-Cap averages in the US closed lower. While equities sold off across the board to end the week, the Eurozone still managed to book a nice gain with the German Dax (DAXX) and Stoxx 50 (STOXX) up 4-5% each in what was a short week for much of the region.
The Nikkei 225 (NI) and Shanghai Composite (SSEC) each closed almost 2% higher in what was also a short week for much of Asia.
The best part about the end of the month is that there's always a fresh batch of Monthly Charts waiting for us. We only perform this exercise once the candlesticks are completed, which in this case was Thursday April 30th. It takes me about half an hour to get through them all, which represents roughly 6 hours of my entire year's work. I promise you from the bottom of my heart that there is no single part of my entire process that I find more helpful than this monthly chart review.
You see, this process forces us to take a step back, and gives us no choice but to identify the direction of the primary trends. We use these to put shorter-term trends into context. So no matter what your timeframe is, I think first identifying primary trends, and then working our way down from there, is a huge advantage over a blind bottoms/up approach.
Here are the things that stood out most during my review:
Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.
This week we want to highlight the continued divergence between Energy stocks and Oil using our Sector and Industry ETF and Commodity tables.
First, let's look at some of the longer-term leaders. Biotechs (IBB) just broke out to fresh multi-year highs and are one of the top performers on our Industry ETF list across all timeframes.
Aside from Gold Miners (GDX), they are the only industry on our expanded list of over 50 ETFs already back at fresh 52-week highs. Definitely some relative strength worth paying attention to in these areas.
Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.
As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.
Every weekend we publish simple performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with brief commentary on each.
As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.
This week we want to highlight our US Equity Index and Sector tables, as they are both showing continued evidence to support some of the trends we've discussed recently.