Gold has been a terrible inflation hedge over the trailing 24 months. It’s gone nowhere since the summer of 2020, while every other commodities have experienced rip-roaring rallies.
The truth is, the "inflation hedge" narrative is just that – a narrative. And I believe it’s false.
But, more importantly, so does price.
I prefer to lean on John Murphy’s observation that gold has a tendency to sniff out inflation, leading to major bull runs in commodities.
And, with gold futures on the verge of breaking down to fresh two-year lows, I think it’s a good time to revisit this often misunderstood metal.
Remember, gold was the first commodity to rally in 2019 – a full year ahead of the rest of the rest of the space.
Here’s a chart of gold futures overlaid with our equal-weight commodity index, highlighting the base breakouts:
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.
These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.
It has all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry, we developed a separate universe for that. You can click here to check it out.
The Hall of Famers is simple.
We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.
We held our September Monthly Strategy Session Tuesday night. Premium Members can click here to watch the recording and review the chartbook.
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.
After Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks this morning, the market is pricing in an 86% chance of a 75-basis-point hike later this month.
Meanwhile, rates continue to accelerate at the short end of the curve. That’s been the story for months now.
But will the middle and long end of the curve head higher as well?
According to the two-year US Treasury yield, the answer is a resounding "yes!"
Short-duration rates offer plenty of valuable, leading information regarding US Treasury yields.
We’ve leaned on the five-year yield throughout the current cycle as an early indication of the direction of the 10- and 30-year. It’s proved a beneficial practice.
Today, we’re going to drop it down a notch, extending the same logic to the two-year yield.
Here’s a quad-pane chart of the two-, five-, 10-, and 30-year US Treasury yields:
The reason is because it helps me allocate my time better. Should I be spending more time looking for stocks to buy, should I be spending more time looking for stocks to sell, or should I be at the beach because the market is a mess?
Being able to answer this question correctly can be a huge advantage.
I think blindly incorporating a specific type of strategy at all times, regardless of the market conditions seems awfully difficult.
If we can first identify what type of market environment we're in, then we can pick and choose which tools and strategies are best fit for that part of the cycle.
Are we in a high volatility environment? Then why would we implement strategies that are best suited for low volatility environments?
Are we in a trending market environment? Then why would we use the tools and strategies that are best for sideways rangebound markets?
I think we first identify where we are in the cycle, and then decide how to approach the market from there.
Recently I've been listening to a wider variety of music than I have in the past. It's by design.
Each week, I've assigned myself a little goal to listen to a new album. I set aside a few hours to actively listen and immerse myself in the music -- to relax, of course, but also to consider the themes and overall messages artists are trying to convey.
It's been fun, and I'm enjoying it immensely. And it's also helped me become a better writer and opened my outlook on life more broadly.
Music is powerful. I can't imagine life without it. And one particular track from my personal list of top 10 classic hip hop pieces of all time has been stuck in my head all day.
We got just a little bit of Dollar weakness starting in mid-July and stocks ripped higher. Thousands of points added to the Dow, Ethereum doubled and the average stock on the Nasdaq rallied over 40%.
We saw one of the most historic short-squeezes in history. And all it took was just a little bit of Dollar weakness. It wasn't even that much.
But then once that Dollar strength came back last month, the bid in stocks and crypto disappeared.
Here's a zoomed out look at the negative correlation between stocks and the Dollar: