We take a weight of the evidence approach here at All Star Charts. There is no one data point that will suggest buying is more advantageous than selling, or vice versa. In addition, the process of collecting and reviewing that data, to me, is really the most important thing I do. There are no short cuts in this business. You have to put in the work and I share the results of that homework with you daily so you don't have to.
Today I want to point you to a chart that I've kept for a while, but have never really shared because I don't want to overwhelm you with too much data. But since we're at a critical point, I think it's worth adding to the Chartbook this week:
One of the things that impresses me the most about Technology is the fact that Amazon, a stock up over 70% since February, isn't even a tech stock. While some people like to argue that Amazon is a Technology company, and that may be true, it is not a Technology stock. In fact, $AMZN represents a 0% weighting in the S&P Technology Sector Index or in the ETF. Instead, it spends its days holding up the serial underperforming Consumer Discretionary Sector with a 13% weighting.
We trade and invest in stocks, not companies. So we'll focus on the supply and demand dynamics of stocks, and ignore the noise surrounding "companies". The big question I want to ask is, what would the Tech sector look like if Amazon was included?
You guys who have followed my work over the years know how many charts I look at on a daily and weekly basis. Believe it or not, it's probably even more than you think. Some things pique my interest more than others, of course, but it's the collective weight of the evidence that allows me to formulate a thesis given all of the available information. The specifics include price and sentiment data from stock, bond, commodity and forex markets around the world, most represented visually in chart form.
Sometimes there is a specific scenario in a given market that can impact the direction of the price of a lot of different assets around the world. Today, what I see in US Treasury Bonds is what I find to be the most interesting trade in the world. What is happening in this market? Is this a top in bonds and bottom in rates? Is this multi-decade uptrend in bonds finally coming to an end? It's hard to imagine considering you need to be older than 60 to remember a structural bear market in bonds during your wall street career.
One of the benefits of it being 2016 is that global markets are more interrelated than ever before. We can take price data from the other side of the world and use it to take advantage of domestic markets in the United States as well as many other countries and asset classes. To purposely ignore what is taking place in markets around the world seems irresponsible at this point.
Today we are watching what Latin American stocks are suggesting for the next direction in Crude Oil prices:
Earlier today I was on the Benzinga morning radio chatting with Joel and Dennis about the current market environment. We've been pounding the table bullish U.S. stocks for almost 3 months now and fortunately the market has cooperated with us. Technology has been the big leader along the way and I think this theme continues. Meanwhile, money has rotated out of bonds as interest rates have risen with stocks over the past few months.
We discuss this rotation and some of my favorite names in the tech space. Here is the interview in full:
Summer is seasonally a low volume time for the market, the big traders are on vacation with their families, playing golf with their buddies and attending various charity events in beautiful locations. Meanwhile, the rookies are at the desks with their hands tied behind their backs.
Now that Labor Day has come and gone, volume starts to pick up and the rookies are back to fetching coffee for the big boys. This year has certainly not been immune to this traditional September adjustment
As always I use my top down approach to first identify
Over the last few years, all we've heard from the financial media and economists are how we're in a "rising rate environment" and interest rates are going up. They keep averaging down on their irresponsible calls because they can. They have no skin in the game. They don't care about making money in the market. The media wants to sell ads and who knows what economists are thinking. As the great Warren Buffett said last year, "Any company who has an economist has one employee too many".
Meanwhile U.S. 30-year yields hit new lows in July proving all of their forecasts to be incorrect (shocking I know). And there is probably a good reason for that. They obsess over what the federal reserve people are saying, and blatantly ignore price action. Rather than focusing on what pays, they instead choose to focus on gossip from a group of people who never stop talking, literally.
U.S. Treasury Bonds have been a short for months (see here), but do we press these shorts or take profits? Today we're looking at what I think is an extremely powerful development over the past week:
Every month I 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. We have been bullish towards both U.S. and International stocks since early July and are seeing money rotate into new sectors and countries showing leadership. We will be discussing this in detail Wednesday.
We will also be focusing particular attention to the follow through, or lack thereof, after Friday's sell-off in U.S. Stocks and the spike in volatility. Bonds have continued lower and will be a major topic as well.
This month's Conference Call will be held on Wednesday September 14, 2016 at 7PM ET. Here are the Registration Details:
We don't have to make things complicated guys. We don't get paid to tell stories and make up reasons for why the market is moving during the day. We are market participants. We are the 99.99% of people in the world who are just here to try and make a profit. We don't have to put together a pitch, or a sexy headline, or ask our boss for permission to do things. We just want to make a buck when the market moves. That's it.
So while all those people out there pretending to be mother goose are making up stories about the fed and inflation and all sorts of noise, we prefer to focus on price, which is literally the only thing that will ever pay anyone in this business. Today we are looking at the chart that has suggested since June that selling Treasury Bonds was the right move, and therefore interest rates would rise.
Sometimes Standard & Poors, Dow Jones, MSCI and FTSE simply don't do the trick. If we want to analyze a specific group of stocks and the big boys haven't created an index with what we want, what then? Through technology, we can just build our own. There's nothing stopping us. Now, we're not just going to create random indexes so we can complete with them in their space. The point here is to build something if and when it is necessary. Will it help us throughout our process or just create unnecessary noise? That is the big question.
With all of the major U.S. Stock Market Indexes hitting all-time highs, I think it’s important to see if the bond market is telling a similar story. Are bonds confirming the risk appetite we’re seeing towards stocks or is there a divergence? Based on my work, bonds suggest there is plenty of risk appetite out there globally and therefore stocks should continue higher.
One of the biggest reasons why I got so bullish towards U.S. Stocks in early July was because of the breakout in Technology out of a multi-year range. This sector represents over 20% of the S&P500, so the way I see it, if the largest sector in America is breaking out of a range to new 52-week highs, it's hard to be bearish. Although there were many other factors that have kept us bullish over the past few months, Technology has definitely been a big one.
Now, as sexy as this breakout in Technology stock prices might have been, it's another breakout in Technology last week that really gets me optimistic:
My favorite event of the year is coming very soon! This is a weekend that I, along with many of my friends, look forward to every Fall. The island of Coronado is a special place that has brought a lot of people together and has helped launch incredibly successful businesses. In other cases, this event along with networking opportunities at the Del Coronado Hotel has helped grow many companies with new partnerships and business ideas. If there is one common denominator for all 5 Stocktoberfests since 2012, it's that. Guys like Josh Brown, Ryan Detrick, myself and many others are always happy to share our success stories post-Coronado Island visits. I'm certain that this year will be no different.
Every week I go sector by sector and start my analysis from scratch on both weekly and daily timeframes. This provides structural perspective to get a bigger picture outlook and then I work my way down to daily timeframes for execution and risk management purposes. This is what we call a top/down approach. Along the way, I also want to see how each sector is performing relative to the rest of the market. This relative strength analysis is usually a 'heads up' for what is to come on a more absolute basis.
Today, I want to focus on one of the most important sectors in the US Stock market and why the relative underperformance is something we want to keep on our radar.
This week I dropped by the News Corp building to chat with Liz Claman on Fox Business. Liz simply wanted to know what we want to be buying and what we want to be selling. I think we need to be watching last year's highs in both the S&P500 and Russell3000. If prices are above those levels, it's hard to be bearish. When you ask what will drive price higher, I'm in the camp that mega-cap tech, which represents over 20% of the S&P500, will continue to be a tailwind for markets.
This morning I was over at the Nasdaq in Times Square chatting with Amber Kanwar on BNN. We discussed why I think U.S. Stocks continue to rally and which key sectors will drive prices higher. Within each of these very important sectors, there are large-cap stocks leading the way for them. I think we're closer to the beginning than the end of this move higher in the S&P500 and these other important sectors. At the end we touch on why extremes in sentiment could be the catalyst to send British Pounds even higher.
We want to look at the broad market and treat every single stock market index as a tiny piece of a much bigger puzzle. The Dow Jones Transportation Average has been a great leading indicator for stocks as an asset class over the past few years and we continue to want to treat it that way. Remember, the Transports peaked at the end of 2014, 6 months before the S&P500 and this year the Dow Transports bottomed out in January, well before the S&P500 and the other major indexes bottomed out in February. So now what?
When you talk about the most important sectors in the stock market, financials certainly have to be near the top of the list. Technology is the largest sector in the S&P500 by market capitalization, but bull markets need participation out of Financials. For argument sake, we'll chalk these up as the two most important sectors in the market together representing over a third of the entire S&P500. Today, we'll focus on the Financials and why I think they are now breaking out.