Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market and its participants.

So while identifying price trends is our ultimate goal, sentiment plays an important role in that process.

Prices don't move up or down because of "fundamentals" or "the economy". The price of assets move based on positioning.

When investors are all positioned one way, and are at a consensus, who's left to drive prices further in that direction?

Last summer we saw some of the most pessimistic sentiment towards stocks in history.

Some of that sentiment has started to shift a bit, like in the AAII and II polls. We're back somewhere towards the middle in those. You need, at least, some bulls to buy stocks to have a bull market.

But when it comes to Fund Managers, Cash is still their largest position, and they're most bearish on equities.

We interrupt this raging bull market to update you on some historic positioning in the bond market that is sure to impact your portfolio, whether you like it or not.

Even if you don't trade bonds, this is really really important.

You see, I know it's easy to sit back and chill out with the S&P500 making new 52-week highs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Dow Transportation Average making new 52-week highs and, of course, the Nasdaq100 making new 52-week highs after posting its best first half to a year EVER.

Market breadth continues to expand and sector rotation is frustrating the hell out of anyone trying to short this market.

The thing is, what even changed?

What happened that stocks have absolutely been ripping higher since last year?

Positioning.

It's not the economy that drives stocks. It certainly isn't fundamentals.

It's positioning.

It's hard for me to have a conversation about the stock market without bringing up what's happening in bonds.

Think about it like this, the market cap of all US Stocks is somewhere around $40 Trillion. For the bond market it's over $120 Trillion.

Volatility in bonds tends to trickle down to other asset classes, especially stocks.

US Stocks really got going in the 4th quarter last year, once the US 10-year Note stopped falling in price.

I don't believe that was a coincidence.

But at this point, Large Speculators have on their most aggressive short position in bonds ever.

So in other words, what is historically the "dumb money", particularly at turning points, are betting more aggressively than ever that bond prices are going to fall and rates will now continue higher:

While many investors have been focused on arbitrary lagging indicators like the economy, we rather keep our attention on reality.

We're grown adults. We don't need bedtime stories to go to sleep at night. So fairytales about recessions, or inflations, or bidens are just not anything we're interested in.

We get paid to sell things at higher prices than where we buy them.

And the bet we've been making for a long time is that the negative correlation between the US Dollar and stocks will remain in place.

That bet has paid off handsomely for us and anyone listening.

So as investors we all have a choice. Do we bet that the correlation is all of a sudden going to change tomorrow? Or do we bet that things just remain the same?

Here is the US Dollar Index consolidating in what appears to be a classic continuation pattern, within an ongoing downtrend:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the world's most important stock market index.

While many think the "pros" use the S&P500 because they may be benchmarked to it, those "pros" are not your problem.

DON'T FIGHT PAPA DOW, is how I learned it.

If you get the Dow 30 right, you'll get the S&P500 right.

And if you're going to do a sum of the parts analysis, would you rather try to get the direction of 30 stocks right? Or 500?

With the S&P500 already hitting new 52-week highs, do you think the Dow is next?

They look the same don't they?

More and more "things" keep making new highs.

This is the sort of thing that happens in bull markets.

You can see Ethereum and Bitcoin both finding support the past year near former resistance levels from the highs in its prior cycle at the end of 2017:

As investors, the first step in deciding whether to buy something or not is to identify the direction in which price is heading.

So many investors out there choose to skip this step.

I never understood that.

We know for a fact that asset prices trend. We know. We all have the data. It's just a fact.

So if we know that, then why wouldn't we begin our process by identifying which direction price is heading?

"Should we buy this stock?"

Well, is it going up in price? Down? Or sideways?

Trend recognition is also really helpful in identifying the type of market environment we're in.

"Are the majority of stocks going up? Down? Or sideways?"

At the end of every month we get a fresh batch of monthly data that goes a long way in helping us identify these trends.

On Friday we just got the highest monthly close for both the Nasdaq100 and S&P500 in over a year.

This is now the 3rd consecutive month that they do that:

Sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market.

We saw it at the beginning of the year as the laggards caught up to the leaders.

Remember, in the back half of last year, almost everything was working, EXCEPT large-cap growth stocks.

What are the best performers this year? Large-cap growth stocks.

More recently, we've seen rotation into Small-caps and Industrial stocks that were the underperformers in the early part of 2023.

This is perfectly normal behavior for bull markets.

In bear markets you see the opposite. In bear markets, the leaders tend to catch down to the laggards.

This is definitely not that.

So what's the bet?

Is it time to just hold your nose and buy Disney down here?

Sector rotation has been working.

The laggards are catching a bid.

Is Disney the next stock that money is going to rotate into?

What if we don't own enough Bitcoin?

Have you thought about that?

What if BTC is trading back above those Summer 2021 lows?

What is the risk of NOT owning enough Bitcoin?

That's what I think about.

Here's what the chart of BTC looks like as all that former support throughout 2021 has turned into resistance in 2023:

I was promised a crisis. Maybe even a recession.

Instead all I got was the best start to a year for the Nasdaq100 ever.

You want to talk about ignoring the news and focusing on price?

This is why.