Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood" column where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 3, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off with our "Minor Leaguers" column.
What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.
We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names. There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.
We questioned whether it was a rounding top reversal pattern – in which case we’d be looking for a breakdown.
Or, if it was actually a failed breakdown - and we all know what tends to follow those patterns…
The responses we received were mixed. But there were plenty of bulls who wanted to be long against the former lows and bet on a swift reaction higher.
That’s pretty much the camp we were in too. We recently wrote about all of the whipsaw action we’ve been witnessing.
We said the next critical piece of information we’d be looking for was whether or not these patterns would see some real follow-through and confirmation.
Fast forward a week or so, and we definitely have our answer.
So let’s talk about it, and more importantly, what it means for risk assets.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
In today’s Commodity Report, we zoomed out to our monthly charts to reconnect with the primary trend. This exercise really allows us to tune out the noise on the weekly and daily charts.
As we were reviewing our charts, there was one recurring theme that kept popping up...
Pullbacks and retests.
The CRB Index retested its breakout zone near the 2018 highs ~206.
Crude oil broke back below a 13-year downtrend line only to reclaim it in recent sessions.
Iron ore fell right back to check in on its 2013 highs.
And even palladium, the one bright spot in the precious metals space, pulled back to a six-year trendline.
But guess what? Just like we’ve recently seen in many of the weakest areas in other asset classes, buyers dug in at these key levels.
Of all these retests, one that stood out most was Uranium.
Once again this month, I’m going to share info on positions that were closed in the month of August. As a reminder, our exit plans are always laid out ahead of time in each trade idea we publish. In every case, the exits mentioned below were all in accordance with the plans as laid out.
As we head towards September expiration, we have three open positions remaining with expiring September options that need our attention. Most of our delta-neutral premium-selling plays worked out in August, which makes sense considering the slow markets we just endured. Let's dive in.
Positions with September options that need monitoring:
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Mixed signals have been the rule rather than the exception since the market peaked in early February.
The major stock indexes have continued to print record highs while breadth has deteriorated beneath the surface, creating several bearish divergences.
Some stocks have gone up and some stocks have gone down. But the reality is that most stocks have gone nowhere.
The same is true for commodities.
We’ve noticed pockets of strength in base metals, livestock, and softs. But the majority of commodities have remained range-bound since the beginning of May.
These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.
This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday September 7th @ 6PM ET. 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 2015.
The S&P 500 and the other US large-cap indexes have continued to grind to new highs all year, completely unphased by any of the deterioration in breadth beneath the surface.
But, when looking at the global stage, things are different…
In this post, we’ll look at the current state of market breadth around the globe and discuss whether internals are supporting the new highs in many international indexes.
It's always a worrying sign when price is making new highs at the index level with a lack of confirmation from internals. But that simply isn’t the case for ex-US equities these days.
In fact, it’s just the opposite, as we’re seeing our breadth metrics support and confirm the recent price action on a global scale.
Here we’re looking at the percentage of developed and emerging markets above their 50-day moving averages:
From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts
Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return tables for various asset classes and categories, along with commentary on each.
Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.
We consider this our weekly state of the union address as we break down and reiterate both our tactical and structural outlook on various asset classes and discuss the most important themes and developments currently playing out in markets all around the world.
In our last report, we discussed all the whipsaws we had been witnessing in recent weeks and noted that the next major piece of information would be the velocity of the reactions these charts made in the opposite direction.
What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y-axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.
This chart can be any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes, it’s an absolute price chart. Other times, it’s on a relative basis.
It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!
The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.
While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…
So let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?