From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

This week's Mystery Chart was a simple yet pivotal one... it was a ratio chart of Stocks vs Treasury Bonds.

With stocks struggling at resistance this week and Treasuries meandering beneath all-time highs, both appear to be at key inflection points.

Making things even more interesting is that the S&P 500 (SPY) relative to 20+ Year Treasury Bonds (TLT) ratio is also at a key level of interest. It is make-or-break time for these two asset classes so let's dive in and see what's going on.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 8, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Many of the relative trends in stocks that have been in place for a long time have come into question recently as they're showing signs of maturing due in part to the change in leadership we wrote about this week.

In this post, we'll highlight two structural intermarket themes that have remained robust throughout this tumultuous time for equity markets.

The first relative trend that hasn't slowed down at all is the relentless outperformance of the US over the rest of the world. Our first table shows the Wilshire 5000 (DWC) dominating every Global Index over just about every timeframe, from this week to the trailing year.

Click table to enlarge view.

Bull market? Bear market? Sideways market? That is the question on everyone's minds.

We've put together the five most important charts we're monitoring to help answer that question.

JC recently posted some of the best charts from our US Chartbook, so I wanted to share those along with some of the best charts from our India Chartbook.

Let's take a look at what's going on in the major asset classes.

Let's start with Bonds. Here's the US 10-Year Note Futures printing their highest monthly close in history, clearly in an uptrend. The Bond market remains in an uptrend both in the US and most markets around the globe.

Click on chart to enlarge view. 

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, May 1, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This week we're highlighting the underperformance from the US using our Global Index and International ETF tables.

Click table to enlarge view.

Despite the Wilshire 5000 (DWC) closing slightly higher on the week, all major Large-Cap averages in the US closed lower. While equities sold off across the board to end the week, the Eurozone still managed to book a nice gain with the German Dax (DAXX) and Stoxx 50 (STOXX) up 4-5% each in what was a short week for much of the region.

The Nikkei 225 (NI) and Shanghai Composite (SSEC) each closed almost 2% higher in what was also a short week for much of Asia.

The best part about the end of the month is that there's always a fresh batch of Monthly Charts waiting for us. We only perform this exercise once the candlesticks are completed, which in this case was Thursday April 30th. It takes me about half an hour to get through them all, which represents roughly 6 hours of my entire year's work. I promise you from the bottom of my heart that there is no single part of my entire process that I find more helpful than this monthly chart review.

You see, this process forces us to take a step back, and gives us no choice but to identify the direction of the primary trends. We use these to put shorter-term trends into context. So no matter what your timeframe is, I think first identifying primary trends, and then working our way down from there, is a huge advantage over a blind bottoms/up approach.

Here are the things that stood out most during my review:

Chris Ciovacco is someone whose work I've followed for many years. His approach to markets is similar to mine, in that he incorporates a weight-of-the-evidence technical strategy. His open-mindedness and ability to set up multiple outcomes to prepare for, is one to be admired. In this episode, Chris walks through his thought process when analyzing the current environment. He makes a great comparison to early 2009 and asks whether we're in January '09, just before another severe decline in stocks, or in May, on the way up after already bottoming.

Did you notice how Stocks, Bonds and Gold are all at or near 34-day highs?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, April 24, 2020:

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

This week we want to highlight the continued divergence between Energy stocks and Oil using our Sector and Industry ETF and Commodity tables.

First, let's look at some of the longer-term leaders. Biotechs (IBB) just broke out to fresh multi-year highs and are one of the top performers on our Industry ETF list across all timeframes.

Aside from Gold Miners (GDX), they are the only industry on our expanded list of over 50 ETFs already back at fresh 52-week highs. Definitely some relative strength worth paying attention to in these areas.

Be sure to read our recent post on Gold Miners.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Bonds are on the move once again, so we're updating our risk management levels and targets.

Additionally, we'll revisit the ratios to analyze which credit quality and duration characteristics remain in favor.

This is an intermarket world that we live in. If you think what happens in the commodities and bond market isn't directly tied with what's also happening in the stock market, you've got a lot of homework to do.

You guys who have been following around along time know that we start out every single conversation about the stock market with, "Okay, what are bonds and commodities doing". It starts there. And then we go into the asset in question.

Look at Crude Oil still crashing down to new multi-decade lows:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Every weekend we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with 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 Industry tables as they illustrate an important resumption in leadership from the market's most resilient areas.

Click on table to enlarge view.