We held our June Monthly Strategy Session this past Thursday night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.
Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.
By focusing on long-term, monthly charts the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a "big-picture" point of view.
With that as our backdrop, let's dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month's call.
For me, it's not just about one indicator or one chart.
It's a weight of the evidence game.
Since March, the bet has been Messy For Longer. We've expected a choppy environment. That's what the weight-of-the-evidence and history suggested.
But now what? Are these consolidations going to resolve lower? Or Higher? Or just stay messy for even longer?
That's what makes this all so great. I don't know. And neither do you. No one does.
It's a beautiful thing.
So as I weigh the evidence to decide rollover or breakout, I come to a series of divergences that put this stock market in quite the predicament.
With S&Ps and major indexes hovering near all-time highs, we're just not seeing it from the components themselves. Here's the Russell3000, for instance, seeing fewer and fewer new highs:
This is a fun one. I got to sit down with Paul Ciana to talk about all things Fixed Income, Commodities and Currencies. Paul is now the Chief Global FICC Technical Strategist and Director of Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. But in the early days, him and I used to study for our CMTs together back in 2006.
What's nice about this is that in his current position, and for 10 years at Bloomberg prior to his 5 years at BofA, he's had the opportunity to speak to many of the largest portfolio managers in the world. I want to know what he's learned from all those conversations!
Paul always gives great perspective and as you know, the macro view carries a big weighting throughout our process. So this episode really hit home.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley.
We held our May Monthly Strategy Session Monday night which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
For these calls, we really take a step back and put things in the context of their structural trends by focusing only on Monthly charts. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises.
In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting three of the most important charts and topics we covered along with commentary on each.
The DeFi Revolution is upon us, at least according to Jim Bianco. For many years, I've looked up to Jim and the work he's been doing at Bianco Research and, in fact, he's the one who first inspired me to rip through hundreds of charts during my live presentations in order to get my points across. It took me about a decade to realize it, but it was him who I got that from.
Fast forward to 2021, and the Macro Technician who I've always admired has turned into one of the leading voices of what's taking place in DeFi, or "Decentralized Finance". Who better to talk to about what's going on than Jim himself? Ethereum, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Yield Farming, Metamask Wallets, Coinbase....the whole thing.
On this week's episode of Bearish or Bullish, we talk about Year 2 of Bull Market cycles for stocks. Is this one those? Like 1976, like 1983, like 2004, like 2010?
What about Ethereum continuing to hold its breakout? Why is Ether doing so much better than Bitcoin?
Financials and European stocks breaking out of historic bases?
European Super Leagues? The Knicks don't suck?....what the heck is going on around here?
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 to profit in the weeks and months ahead.
The weight of the evidence still suggests it's prudent to be a buyer, not a seller, of risk assets for more meaningful time horizons.
Shorter-term, the market looks increasingly messy. For the first time in over a year, defensive assets are beginning to stabilize at logical levels of support, while stocks and major risk groups achieve our upside targets. Even a handful of some key Intermarket ratios are potentially diverging from the broader averages.