From the desks of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Tom Bruni @BruniCharting
In this post, we're going to share 10 of the most important charts we're looking at right now. Some are merely for observational purposes or to highlight some of the broader trends at play in the markets while others are trade ideas in some of our favorite names and areas.
In a recent post on Chinese Internet stocks, the team laid out the bullish case for why many of these names look set up to run. Since publishing this post, many of the names discussed have indeed begun breaking out higher.
And one of the names with a pretty impressive base is looking like it's about ready to join it's friends.
There are no called strikes on Wall Street. In other words, we're not penalized for not swinging, like you are in baseball. We have the ability to be patient, to a certain extent at least, depending on your mandate. But most of us don't have mandates! Even one of the best hitters of all time struggled when he swung at bad pitches. In this video we compare Ted Williams' batting average when he swung at good pitches, vs when he swung at bad ones.
This is my favorite reminder that in trading & investing, we want to wait for OUR perfect pitch, and then swing, vs just swinging at anything.
For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!
We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.
You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy,Sell, or Do Nothing?
Hard to believe some low volatility setups are appearing all over the place, but that is the market we are in. The "bull market" in stocks continues higher, seemingly unabated. Who am I to fight it?
And where else should we play but in names that continue to benefit from the "work-from-home" and social distancing mindshift that is happening on a global scale? Like Social Media.
From a Precious Metals' perspective, Palladium has been a clear leader for over a decade. Despite its strong long-term performance, a sharp March drawdown has people wondering whether this is the end of its reign over the Precious Metals' space.
In this post, we're going to outline our "keep it simple stupid" approach to answering that very question.
Do you know when stocks making new 52-week relative lows is actually bullish? When we're talking about Consumer Staples.
You see, when the market is falling apart, you're going to see a sympathy bid, specifically on a relative basis, into Consumer Staples. In other words, no matter how bad things get, we're still going to drink beers, smoke cigarettes, brush our teeth and wash our dishes. Those things won't change. We call them Staples.
On the flip side, when stocks are doing well and the major indexes are in uptrends, or bull markets if you want to call them that, Staples are going to underperform. Their safer-haven status and lower beta components tend to lag during the good times.
In early May we outlined the "Five Bull Market Barometers" we're watching to identify the beginning of a new bull market in stocks.
If you haven't read our initial post linked above, we'd encourage you to check it out so you understand what the rationale behind these five indicators is.
It's also worth pointing out that last week we noted that despite the slight improvement in two of these measures, zero of the five were above their key risk levels. Despite that, the market was telling us that the short-term momentum remained to the upside and our long ideas were working well.
After a couple of strong weeks in the market, let's take a look and see how these longer-term indicators have fared.