This week on the podcast I sit down with Meb Faber, Co-Founder, CEO and CIO of Cambia Investments. In addition to his "Day job", as he puts it, Meb has authored 5 investment books, a countless amount of white papers, and is also a very popular follow on Twitter @MebFaber.

This was really fun for me because Meb is an expert at a lot of things that I am just not, like what happens behind the scenes at ETFs, angel investing and academic studies. He brings up some great points about providing strategies that work, but that people also want/need.

He has some strong opinions about share buy backs instead of distributing dividends, learning through acting and participating, and how lucky him and I are that we took the CMT decades ago when it was a lot easier than it is today!

This was a lot of fun. Meb is a chill dude, but don't let him fool you, he's one of the smartest guys in the room!

Enjoy!

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

Are Softs finally showing signs of life?

Base Metals, Grains, and even Energy have posted strong rallies over the last year. Yet the Softs -- Cocoa, Coffee, Cotton, and Sugar -- have continued to struggle below overhead supply.

But we’re seeing all the traditional signs of a structural trend reversal from this lagging group right now.

Let’s take a closer look at Coffee futures to pinpoint why we believe this bear-to-bull trend change is underway… 

Here’s a weekly chart of Coffee: 

Coffee futures have been in a nasty downtrend for almost a decade. But that no longer appears to be the case as they recently broke above a decade-long downtrend line in early February, signaling a potential...

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 Monday May 3rd @ 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.

Here are the details for Monday evening:

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The new high list on any given day has been unremarkable of late. So far in 2021, the most S&P 500 stocks making new highs on any given day has been 135 (27% of the index). The average for 2021 is closer to 50. Despite these lackluster daily readings more than half of the stocks in the S&P 500 have made new highs at some point in the past two weeks. Continued expansion in the number of stocks that have been making new highs reflects healthy broad market support.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We've covered the Growth vs Value relationship ad nauseam since late last year.

We continue to believe that a structural trend reversal in favor of Value is underway.

We laid out our thesis and the key level we're watching to potentially prove it wrong... That is and has been 1.70 in the Russell Large Cap Growth vs Value ratio.

Once again this month, I’m going to share info on positions that were closed or managed in the month of April. 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 exited in accordance with the plan as laid out.

As we head towards May expiration, we only have one position remaining with May options.

It's been well documented that Gold is the biggest loser of the Commodity space. Every single commodity is doing well in this environment except for Gold.

Perhaps this proves what many people have been telling me my whole career, "Gold is a currency JC, not a commodity!"

And maybe that's true. Who am I to judge?

But if you do consider it a currency, it's still one of the ones no wants this year:

I have a confession to make.

You always hear me talking about how we shouldn't look at Monthly Candlesticks (or any candlestick) until it's completed.

In other words, don't draw conclusions about Weekly candlesticks on Tuesday. Don't make decisions based on Daily candlesticks at 10:30AM. And most certainly do not dissect a monthly candlestick early in the month.

BUT, I have a wedding to go to tomorrow and leaving the house around 2 o'clock, a couple hours before markets close for the month of April.

You no there's no way I can wait until I get back on Sunday to take a peek. Let's be serious. It's like Christmas for me every month when I get to unwrap all the new monthly charts.

I had to look!

I broke my own rule. I couldn't help myself.

But since I did, you know what I noticed?

This is the video recording of the April 29th Town Hall Meeting w/ Willie Delwiche & JC Parets

04/29/21 2PM ET

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

My grandfather always wanted to drive the length of the Alaska Highway. 

One summer, when he and my grandmother were approaching 70, Paul & Doris bought a Ford diesel pick-up truck, installed a camper in the bed, and headed West from their suburban Washington, DC home in pursuit of adventure.

They made the journey in one piece. It was, by all accounts, the trip of a lifetime. I have a photo from that trip that I just love. It's the two of them sitting on a log with a lake in the background, surrounded by the Alaskan summer in all its glory. They are vibrant, robust and full of life.

One of the most anticipated moves that market participants have been waiting for, is a rally in the Commodities space. We had seen some signs of this in December '20-January '21, but those moves didn't sustain. On the contrary, the base metals moved below their resistances and consolidated for two months.

Aluminum was the lone star in this group that continued to power through, despite the overall weakness that was prevalent in this sector.

This was a major reason why we continued to hold out for a rally in the base metals- Relative Strength. Aluminum was displaying relative strength against the rest of the metals. Had it been a scenario of overall weakness, Aluminum would be moving south as well.

We've noticed a pick-up in activity in the same names that were correcting/consolidating and thought this is as good a time as ever, for an update!

Anyone looking at this chart could tell that Aluminum has been on a tear. The price broke out of a three-year...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaways:

• The market hasn’t had to cope with disappointing news 
• Increased confidence raises the expectations bar
• Rising yields & growth hiccups offer a challenge

The S&P 500 has benefitted from an unprecedented string of good news. The economic surprise index has been positive since June (the longest continuous streak on record) and for most of that time has been accompanied by a rising earnings revision trend. Since 2003, this combination of positive economic surprises and rising earnings revisions have occurred less than 30% of the time. But in that environment, the S&P 500 has risen at a 20% annual rate, versus an overall annualized gain of 8.7% since January 2003.

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

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

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

Something we’ve been working on internally this year is using various bottoms-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. One way we’re doing this is by identifying stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small, to mid, to large, and ultimately to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B) they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn’t just end there. We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, and Salesforce, to a myriad of others… all would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table you will notice...

The ASC team has been writing a lot recently about how markets are looking a bit "messy" right now. This isn't a bullish or bearish declaration, it's just an indication that many of the recent moves we've seen are likely to hit into some consolidation.

And as an options traders, the word "consolidation" should trigger thoughts of delta neutral credit spreads.

With this in mind, I've identified a good short strangle candidate.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key takeaway: Optimism remains widespread from a cyclical perspective but history shows that it can (and in the past, has) remain elevated for extended periods of time. Options data show  the record surge in call activity over the past year has stalled. If the speculative fever that has helped fuel recent gains is breaking, resiliency beneath the surface and the continued tailwind provided by better than expected earnings and economic data will be increasingly important. After an unprecedented period of positive surprises, we just don’t know how investors would respond to disappointment at this point. We do know that stocks are most vulnerable when optimism is being unwound.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Speculative Fever Breaking? 

Equity options activity hints that investors are regaining their senses after a feverish bout of speculation. After an incredible surge, call activity may be rolling over....

On this week's episode of Bearish or Bullish, we talk about Year 2 of Bull Market cycles for stocks. Is this one those? Like 1976, like 1983, like 2004, like 2010?

What about Ethereum continuing to hold its breakout? Why is Ether doing so much better than Bitcoin?

Financials and European stocks breaking out of historic bases?

European Super Leagues? The Knicks don't suck?....what the heck is going on around here?

Let's discuss:

The messy market for stocks continues. Sure, a few stock indexes in the United States have made new highs, but how many stocks in those indexes are doing that?

Not as many, that's for sure, especially in small-caps and the Nasdaq, where we're only seeing a fraction of stocks still making new highs.

Divergences persist....

This environment continues to remind me of a lot of the "Year 2" of market cycles that we've seen before. Take the initial thrust off the 2009 lows for example. Notice the sideways chop in Year 2 of that cycle: