On Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve announced another 75-basis-point rate hike following its September policy meeting.
Yields across the curve ripped, and Treasury bonds dipped.
What else is new?
An aggressive hiking regime has been the Fed’s modus operandi since March. And it's made clear its intent to stay the course.
But what does the rest of the market think about the rise in rates?
Let’s look at our intermarket ratios to gain some insight.
First, we have a triple-pane chart of regional banks versus REITs, the copper/gold ratio, and the US 10-year yield:
These key intermarket ratios tend to peak and trough with interest rates. Notice all three peaked in 2018.
As rates roll over and growth slows, investors reach for the safety of gold and REITS versus the more economically sensitive copper and regional banks.
In the past quarter century, only 2002 & 2008 have been more volatile than 2022. None have seen less strength beneath the surface than 2022. Other than this year, the only year to see more volatility than strength was 2008.
Why It Matters:
Every year is its own experience, but we can see similarities in market environments over time. The current environment is consistent with past periods of persistent weakness.
We recently closed an October Short Strangle in the Energy ETF $XLE at our profit target. The timing was pretty fortuitous, considering the wild ride all stocks have been on since the latest Federal Reserve interest rates announcement.
With volatility ticking backup up quite noticeably, $XLE has climbed back up near the top of my implied volatility list of ETFs, and the November options are priced in such a way that we can sell some pretty far out-of-the-money strikes increasing our odds of success.
I was in the city yesterday for a few meetings and dropped by Fox Business to have a little chat with Charles Payne.
Charles is one of the few who let me talk about whatever I want. No agenda. Just price action.
I appreciate that.
It was just a short hit. But we talked about the seasonal tailwinds for stocks, how a stronger Dollar means stocks will remain under pressure, and what Financials and Homebuilders are telling us about the market.
The most significant insider activity on today's list comes in Form 4 filings by Robert Harris and Jonathan Glaser, directors of Hudson Pacific Properties $HPP.
Harris and Glaser filed Form 4s reporting purchases worth a combined $393,320.
Tuesday night we held our September Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each