People don't like it when I tell them the Dow is going to 30,000. They tend to get even more worked up when I tell them it's going to 40,000 after that.
I'm old enough to remember a time when stocks going up was a good thing. In my opinion, there is still a massive amount of underexposure in the equities market.
So when I get asked, "Well JC, what's going to take stocks to those levels?". I think it's pretty clear that it's Technology:
Since late August when interest rates around the globe began their counter-trend rally we've begun to see some outperformance from international equities...leading to headlines like this.
So, is the trend in international underperformance finally over?
In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about why we want to keep selling gold and buy stocks instead. This trade is working and we don't want to fight it. This has been our base case for months, as you can see here. One of the things that we want to incorporate into our study of price is the positioning of Commercial Hedgers and Speculators, which is published weekly by the CFTC in the Commitment of Traders Report.
In this video I explain how we use this data, why we care, and when to pay attention!
Tuesday's Mystery Chart had a lot of people talking and guessing (incorrectly, as usual), so thank you all for your feedback and participation.
Overall the feedback was the chart was a longer-term buy, but people had concerns about how far it's run in the near-term.
With that as our backdrop, let's get into it.
Here's the US Healthcare Providers (IHF) which is emerging from a consolidation via a sharp rally as momentum gets overbought.
Overall this looks like the start of the subsector's next major move to the upside, but we'll get more information about its sustainability from seeing how prices digest their more than 20% gains since early October. Bulls want to see that correction occur through time, rather than price, with IHF preferably staying above its July highs near 180.
This week's Chart of The Week outlined a compelling case for the Pharmaceutical sector to bottom at current levels, so this post is going to outline the stocks we want to be buying to capitalize on this potential inflection point.
Let's take a step back and talk about what a huge waste of money I think it is to own gold. It's not just that I don't think it goes up in value, it's more about what else we could be doing with that money. It's the opportunity cost here that I believe burns the hole in your pocket. Will our money be treated better in rocks or in stocks? I still think it's in stocks.
In early October, I put out a note reiterating why we wanted to be selling gold. This is after over a year of a bullish approach towards the yellow metal. So to be clear, I am not a gold bug or a gold hater. The truth is that I couldn't care less whether gold doubles in price or gets cut in half. It's not my problem. For me, Gold is just another asset in a humongous world of many assets. If you think it's anything more than that, I believe you've already lost.
If you weren't too busy reading reports of upcoming recessions, you may have noticed that the MSCI World Index broke out to new all-time highs this month. The award for best ETF Ticker goes to the good folks at iShares: $URTH
After a 21-month bear market, the planet Earth is now starting a new leg higher. I continue to believe very strongly that if stocks are above last year's highs, it is incredibly irresponsible not to be aggressively long.
There is information everywhere. We analyze both the Indexes and the ETFs. We look at markets all over the world priced in both local currency and in US Dollars. We often use Gold as the denominator as well as the Indexes themselves to analyze relative strength. It's one big giant web of money flow.
Today I want to call your attention to an interesting divergence that has come at important turning points in the past. Specifically I'm referring to the Wisdom Tree Hedged Exchange Traded Funds for Europe and Japan: $HEDJ and $DXJ respectively. These funds are priced in local currencies as opposed to most other ETFs around the world that are priced in US Dollars.
First, here is the Europe Index Fund priced in Euro breaking out to all-time highs. I've been chuckling to myself a lot lately because when was the last time you could say the words "Europe" and "all-time" highs in the same sentence with a straight face?