What often gets lost in the shuffle between whether or not to buy emerging market stocks is the fact that there are several important components within the group. Emerging markets aren't just one thing. They are a collection of major markets around the world that are not yet fully developed.
Today we're talking about the structural breakout we're seeing in shares of the India Exchange Traded Fund $INDY. Look at the former highs in 2011 that were tested again in early 2015. This year prices were finally able to break out above that key resistance to begin a new leg higher. These are characteristics of uptrends, not downtrends. The weekly bar chart tells the story well:
These are the registration details for our live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts India.
This month’s Conference Call will be held on Tuesday, December 21st at 7 PM IST. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since our launch.
In the world we live in today, it's hard to find someone that is excited about Consumer Staples. "Why, do they have a new digital coin out?" is what you might hear. While some people treat the the volatility in certain asset classes as something to be distracted about, we just look at bitcoin and its fellow coins as another investing vehicle. Consumer Staples have just as important of a role in our process. Today, I want to talk about the breakout we've seen this week in the Equally-weighted Consumer Staples Index Fund.
The way I learned it, the bigger the base, the higher in space! We want to buy breakouts from markets that have been range-bound for a while. Consumer Staples are one of them.
I have a workbook of charts where I keep the entire list of stocks in the Consumer Staples Sector. With the Equally-weighted Consumer Staples Index breaking out of a multi-year base, we want to find the stocks that are going to lead this sector higher.
Here is a list of the ones that stand out which are showing strength and a risk vs reward skewed in favor of the bulls following the longer-term and shorter-term uptrend in Consumer Staples:
One thing I feel has gotten lost in the whole "Stocks and Bitcoin make all-time highs every day"rhetoric is the overwhelming weakness in precious metals. Gold, Silver, Platinum and Gold Mining stocks are all making new lows, resuming their trend of lower lows and lower highs.
We've been aggressively bearish Gold, Gold Mining Stocks and anything precious metals really since October. Based on what we've seen since then, I see no reason to change our approach towards this market. To the contrary, I think the selling we've seen come in confirmed everything we had been seeing in September - a bunch of people getting caught long in a bull trap. It was classic.
We look to Financials as a leader. We've never had a bull market in US Stocks without participation from the banks. They don't necessarily need to be leading but they do need to participate. When we see the S&P Financials Index going out at new 10-year weekly closing highs, it's hard to be bearish stocks as an asset class. This has been a big part of the aggressively bullish case I've been making since the summer of 2016. Meanwhile, the Broker Dealers Index is holding above its former all-time highs from 2007 and just beginning a new leg higher.
These are not bearish characteristics for stocks as an asset class.
Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.
We've been bullish towards US and Global Stocks as they remain in strong uptrends on any sort of intermediate-term time horizon. I still think this is an environment where we need to be buying weakness in stocks, not selling strength. The weight of the evidence is still pointing to an increased amount of risk appetite, not risk aversion. We will go over a multi-timeframe approach on this conference call where we will start with the longer-term and then work our way down to more short-term to intermediate-term investing ideas. This will also include other assets like the US Dollar, Euro, Gold, Silver, Crude Oil and Interest Rates.
There is a lot to be said for taking the time to analyze all of the stocks in an index. I find that process to be much more rewarding than obsessing over every 50 basis point move in the index itself. I've written in the past about how I think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is underrated. You can go through all 500 stocks in the S&P500 or just 30 of them in the DJIA and you'll get a quick snapshot of the health of the market. If there are more good ones than bad ones, it's probably not a downtrend in the index. If there are more bad stocks than good ones, it's likely the index will follow them lower as well.
Sector rotation is the lifeblood of every bull market. When one sector reaches a temporary peak, another one takes over the charge while the former leaders consolidate. We have seen this happen throughout the past 2 years in a very consistent way. Today we're taking a look at all of the individual sectors and the industry groups within them to find the areas of strength and weakness moving forward.
