I'm in Vancouver for a few days. While I'm here, I need to meet with Gold Bugs and ski Whistler. That's what you do around here right? I'm good with both.
It's hard to have a serious conversation with the true yellow metal cult followers. These clowns are bullish at all times and have been expecting Gold to make a huge move every day since their last big move that ended in 2011. "This is it", I've been hearing for years. But Nope. Not only have they not made any money, but the opportunity cost (what else could they have done with that cash) is through the roof. It's been painful to watch them.
For our purposes, open minded investors, in other words, we don't care if Gold doubles or goes to zero. We could not care less. Our jobs aren't dependent on them. Our "investment strategy" is not tied to rising prices for precious metals and since we don't have "a narrative", we don't need to make things up to justify our existence.
We want to be buying things that are going up and selling things going down. It may sound oversimplified, but that's just the truth. Securities trend. There is a much higher likelihood for a trend to continue than for...
John Roque is a Technical Analyst who I've looked up to since early in my career. From the bottom of my heart, it was guys like him who inspired me to analyze the behavior of markets and do it in a way that is unique to me. I've always enjoyed his comparisons between markets and sports. While on the sell side, John was consistently ranked among the top analysts before joining the buy side, including Soros Fund Management. In this conversation, we discuss everything from Ted Williams to Corn Futures. He gives us his thoughts on Gold, Crude Oil, Interest Rates and the combined market-caps of Financials & Technology sectors. This was a real honor for me to get to interview one of my favorite...
In today's Chart of The Week we've outlined a name that's breaking out to new highs, offering a great entry on the long side. In this post, I'll outline a few more names that we need to be buying as they break out as well.
For the last few weeks I've been writing in our notes to Institutional clients and internally to our team about the slow rotation into Cyber, and last week we saw that trend accelerate to the upside.
Today's chart of the week outlines a breakout in the Cybersecurity ETF HACK relative to the S&P 500. In this post we'll discuss which indiivudal names are offering the best reward/risk opportunity.
The iShares Real Estate ETF IYR is up more than 17% from its Christmas Eve lows and sitting just off all-time highs. Can this rally continue and if so, what are the names we want to be buying to take advantage of this theme?
We'll provide our perspective on those questions in this post.
I was down in San Francisco Friday afternoon shopping for a tuxedo for my wedding in a few months. Whenever I'm in the city I like to get Chinese food and swing by the tv networks and say hi. Friday I got to do both.
At Allstarcharts we incorporate what we call a, "Top/Down Approach". To us, this means we start with the broader picture and analyze all of the Indexes around the world. Only then do we dive into our own country or the country in question. This is where we try and identify the trends in the S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and many others. Next we break it down to the sector and industry level like Healthcare, Banks or Technology. Finally when the relative strength and momentum line up in a particular group of stocks, that's when we try and find the best risk vs reward opportunities available to express a given theme.
For me, it's not just the S&P500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This is a market of stocks and I think recognizing what stocks themselves are doing is just as important as identifying the trends of the major indexes. By recognizing the behavior of some of the biggest components in the market, we can approach it from a more informed position.
There are 3 stocks in particular that stood out in my Monthly Chart review this week. I always say it, this exercise which I only perform 12 times per year at the end of each month, is the most valuable part of my entire process. There is no question. It forces us to take a step back and identify the primary trends.
You guys who know me already know that this is my favorite exercise of them all. We only do this 12 times a year. Let's just say that it takes you an hour, if you really want to take your time, that's 12 hours of your entire year. Think about the amount of time you spend each year performing other analysis. As far as I'm concerned, it's not even close. These 6 hours (for me it's 6) are easily the most valuable 6 hours I spend all year analyzing markets.
This process allows us to take a step back, which forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend. It's impossible not to, especially when you're seeing similar themes across Indexes, sectors and asset classes.