Today's Chart of the Day, High Yield Bonds (HYG) vs Short-Term Treasuries (IEI), is one of our favorite risk-appetite ratios.
Credit Market investors favor High Yield Bonds over Treasury Bonds during the "good times" - periods of strong economic growth, rising rates, etc. On the other hand, we know treasuries are a safe-have asset and outperform in environments where investors are uncertain and want a place to park their capital until the smoke clears.
Every weekend we publish simple performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with brief commentary on each.
As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.
This week we want to highlight our US Equity Index and Factor tables, as they are both showing near-term reversions in some of the most robust long-term intermarket trends.
The trend for stocks is down. When they do rally, they scream dead-cat bounce. And bonds keep going out at new all-time highs every week. Gold is at its highest prices in 7 years and Interest rates are in free-fall along with bank stocks. What type of environment does this appear like to you? Is it the kind of market where we want to be buying stocks aggressively, or is this the type of market where we want to be smaller, cash heavy and more defensive?
Let's try to figure it out together.
First of all, Industrials historically have the highest correlation with the S&P500 of all the S&P Sectors. This is what that group currently looks like. One of our most basic technical principles is that former support turns into resistance. We call that Polarity. You can see this taking place in this sector index:
Every weekend we publish simple performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with brief commentary on each.
As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.
This week we want to highlight our US Equity Index and Sector tables, as they are both showing continued evidence to support some of the trends we've discussed recently.
There has been a lot of risk in the stock market over the past 2 months and that still has not changed. Things are getting worse, not better. I tried to emphasize in this week's Live Call that we have NOT seen any evidence to suggest that the worst of the selling is behind us.
We've been inundated with emails from Financial Advisors and traders all over the world. From New York to London, South Africa, Malaysia, Laguna Beach they keep coming in. We work really hard and it is so nice to see how much we've been able to help people, both pros and every day hard working individuals. Thank you from all of us at Allstarcharts! We don't take these notes for granted even for a second.
We know times are tough for some people right now. I have friends and family that lost their jobs today. I'm seeing it outside of markets.
We got a lower low in equities, followed by continued weakness rather than stabilization. Heavy cash positions and a defensive posture remains best in this historically volatile environment.
Given how quickly things are moving, there are three charts on our screen that will help identify when a shift in the market is occuring.
We look at a variety of intermarket ratios that span just about every asset class in order to get a read on interest rates. Here is one that we don't discuss too often, but its relationship with the 10-Year Yield is obvious from looking at the chart below.
The S&P High Beta/S&P Low Volatility (SPHB/SPLV) ratio made significant lows around the same time and place as the 10-Year has several times over the past decade.