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.
Base Metals Bury The Hatchet
Dr. Copper often steals the spotlight when it comes to base metals, and for good reason. It’s one of the most economically sensitive commodities. More importantly, it holds a special place in our collective psyche, as one of the major assets that investors turn to in order to gauge the state of the economy, and even investor risk appetite. With that said, the current correction in Copper has raised some concern, especially given the choppy market conditions.
This is a quick follow-up to discuss a hot stock from a leading industry group... And of course, it's presently offering us a skewed risk/reward. At the end of the day, that's all we're really looking for!
On the surface, this company is just an old LED light and radio-frequency device maker...
But, that's not the whole story.
They actually manufacture and sell some of the most important inputs and materials for a variety of burgeoning growth industries.
While a seemingly favorable fundamental story is always nice to have as a potential catalyst, it is never enough. For us, it's all about price.
Speaking of which, let's dive in and see what the charts are telling us.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
Check out our latest Mystery Chart!
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 of 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
We’ve been pounding the table about the broad-based strength from the US Dollar since earlier this month. Due to the momentum of its recent move, we believe this rally could have legs beyond just the near-term... But we'll address that when the time comes.
Though the Dollar gave some of this month's gains back last week, our short-term outlook remains higher. As I write this, many G-10 currencies like the Euro, Pound, Aussie, and Canadian Dollar are all rolling over relative to USD.
We’ll be revisiting this theme plenty as it plays out over the coming weeks to months.
But in the meantime let’s focus on a currency pair that’s bucking the trend, the US Dollar-Brazilian Real $USD/$BRL.
Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return 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.
We consider this our weekly state of the union address as we break down and reiterate both our tactical and structural outlook on various asset classes and discuss the most important themes and developments currently playing out in markets all around the world.
We've been pretty obnoxious about our position that markets are a total mess these days. But it is what it is, and we can only play the hand we're dealt.
This is one of our favorite bottoms-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.
Welcomeback to our latest "Under The Hood” column for the week ended June 27, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off with our "Minor Leaguers" column.
What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.
We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names. There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.
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.
Energy Futures Turn On The Heat
Crude Oil broke above resistance at its 2019 highs back in June and has been grinding higher ever since despite its energy-related peers remaining beneath their corresponding resistance levels. That changed this week as Heating Oil and Gasoline finally broke out to new multi-year highs. The recent strength from this group comes as base metals continue to correct through time and price. This kind of rotation within the commodities complex is constructive, especially after such a strong run-up off last year’s lows. We think Energy is offering some excellent risk/reward opportunities right now as we’re not only seeing other commodities contracts confirm the price action in Crude, but Energy stocks are also breaking out to new highs (see Chart #5).
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.
Large-Caps recently charged back to fresh all-time highs, but the Small- and Mid-caps are still facing some serious overhead supply.
As always, we’re snooping around our market internals chartbook to see what’s really happening underneath the surface in these areas, and whether internals agree with the price action in these smaller market-cap indexes. And even more importantly, if they support, or disagree with the new highs in Large-Caps.
We'll also answer the question: "Just how bad is the recent deterioration in breadth in some of the weaker indexes?"
We have been getting fewer new highs for a while now, but after such extreme initiation thrusts this isn’t too unordinary, and nothing to cause huge concern.