Every month we get a fresh batch of Monthly Candlesticks. It only happens 12 times a year.
I promise you guys from the bottom of my heart that there is no other part of my entire process that provides as much value and information as my monthly chart review. Premium Members can access the Chartbook here.
In the meantime, my friend Josh Brown and I have been doing these short monthly videos since last summer.
On the latest episode we talk about the historic breakout in Financials, the rotation into Value and out of Growth, what this means for interest rates and how that affects the global intermarket landscape.
This month, I'm going to start presenting these monthly reviews in a different way. I think what would be far more useful to all of you would be a review of all trades we exited in the previous month, as well as updates on any positions approaching expiration in the current month.
While we had a bunch of exits in February, we don't have any positions remaining on the books with March expirations. Let's get to it...
The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.
The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley.
We held our March Monthly Strategy Session last night which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting three of the most important charts and topics we covered along with commentary on each.
Key takeaway: Another bout of late-month market volatility produced quickly frayed nerves. The VIX spiked and put/call ratios moved away from excessive complacency. Our tactical sentiment indicators point to still-elevated optimism even as sentiment surveys have eased recently. Risks arise when breadth deteriorates and a sustained shift from optimism to pessimism emerges. We are not seeing this yet. The $78 billion of equity ETF inflows in February (over the past two months equity ETFs have seen daily net outflows on only 3 occasions) suggests excessive investor positioning, but the risks inherent in that have not yet been manifested. Despite last week’s volatility, cyclical sector leadership persisted and defensive areas made new lows. That does not suggest investors are moving quickly to a risk-off posture.
Sentiment Chart of the Week: XLU/SPY & XLP/SPY Ratios
Two of the most defensive sectors, Utilities and Staples, made new lows...
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
We think it's time to buy Gold Miners again, specifically the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF $GDX.
The yellow metal has not been a great place to deploy capital over the last 6 months as the environment has significantly favored stocks over rocks... and risk-assets over defensive ones in general.
Owning Gold or Gold Miners has been nothing more but opportunity cost. However, there is mounting evidence that suggests now might be the time to jump back into this trade.
First, Commodities have really been working as an asset class. We've been pointing this out for months now, from Industrial Metals and Ags to even petroleum-based commodities.
Although through the early innings of this Commodities resurgence, Gold and Gold Miners have taken a back seat as prices peaked all the way back in the summer of last year and have been trending lower since.
This All Star Charts PLUS Monthly Playbook breaks down the investment universe into a series of largely binary decisions and tactical calls. Paired with our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard, this piece is designed to help active asset allocators follow trends, pursue opportunities, and manage risk.
We've enjoyed a ton of success with our bottoms-up scans and the columns they've inspired over the past year.
We've already launched four columns around them since last summer, and we have more coming soon.
When we combine these scans with our traditional top-down approach, they make it almost impossible to miss profitable opportunities and key market themes.
Today, we're sharing one of our internal favorites with you. It's called "Fade The Street,"and we introduced it in a report last month which you can read here.
It was a big hit and there's been a lot of change since then, so we thought a follow-up was appropriate.
Our Fade The Street scan leverages buy/sell ratings and price target data from sell-side analysts to identify strong stocks with significant potential tailwinds that can propel prices higher in the future.