It’s Whats for Dinner

Back at the end of April in 2015 I wrote about the potential topping pattern developing in the price of beef. At the time, the futures Live Cattle Subindex was ~$80 and looked very vulnerable to lower prices. I wrote that if the head and shoulders pattern played out it projected a target price of $63, which would be a healthy 21% drop.  As you can see in the chart below, price not only hit the $63 initial target but continued lower down to $54 before it eventually bottomed in Sept of last year while forming positive RSI momentum divergence.

Since that time, price has moved higher and has now formed the exact same reversal (but inverse) pattern that developed at the top. In addition, the 200 day moving average is flattening and given additional time and a continuing uptrend, will curl northward. Interestingly, a break and hold above the (blue horizontal) neckline will be technical confirmation the pattern is in play and the upside target is right back where it was at my original post in 2015, $80.

If the charts are correct you should expect this summer’s BBQs to cost a bit more than last year.

Dumpster Diving

The human brain is an amazing thing, especially when it comes to investing. We seem to be wired to want to buy investments that are falling, catching the proverbial knife and shunning those going up. Why is that? I am don’t know but what I consistently hear for investments going up is “It’s at all-time highs. It can’t go higher. When falling, the rationale is “the falling will have to end sometime and the upside when it eventually ends will be huge.” We apparently seem to think we are capable of picking tops (and bottoms). After more than 15 years, being trained by some of the most successful traders/investors, I can confidently say it rarely happens. Sure, a stopped clock is right 2x a day but getting those instances right does not mean it can be done successfully and consistently over the long haul.

Trying to find the bottom in a stock, because of the potential upside is a great lure and one that appeals to me too. These types of trades/investments I affectionately call dumpster diving. To have any chance of success with dumpster diving, I have found they call for a completely different approach than an investment that is in an uptrend. I thought for this post I would actually walk you through a dumpster dive “trade” that I have made in my own account. In the weekly chart of Fitbit (FIT) below you can see it has done nothing but decline once its IPO hangover begun back in August of 2015, losing almost 90% of its value (peak to trough). We see momentum in the upper pane is currently in the oversold zone but is flattening while price has closed higher (albeit slightly) over the past two weeks.  This week we closed with another hammer candlestick which, in a decline, can be indications of a POTENTIAL, short term bottom. Notice the other hammer that occurred back of the end of June last year and marked a tradeable bottom. During those next 12 weeks after the hammer, the price of FIT rose 40%.  40% in 3 months is nothing to sneeze at. But following price further, we see it turned out to only be a temporary bottom (why dumpster diving must be a trade and not a buy and held) and the decline once again continued in earnest. Going into this trade with price well below the (red) 200 day moving average I fully realize the odds this trade will not be “the bottom” so I will be looking to take profits rather than hold this long term.

To optimize entries into any investment, whether it be a dumpster dive or not it is imperative you view the investment on a shorter term time frame and look for triggers and entry setups. For dumpster dives, in an ideal world what I want to see are

1.      A bottoming pattern

2.      An oversold divergent low in momentum

3.      An increase in volume more than 25% greater than the moving average on its breakout from the pattern

Since all of these were present (as you can see in the daily chart of FIT above) I entered the position on Friday of last week.  My first target will be the first gap fill where I will likely take at least ½ the position off the table. If the stock wants to run higher after the fill, the upper gap fill would be my final target where I would be closing out the balance of the position. If I am wrong in my interpretation and the market pushes FIT immediately lower (without filling the initial gap), I will be exiting on a close below the prior low (in this case the “head” of inverse head and shoulders pattern).

Because dumpster dives are not high probability of success (price is below the falling 200 day moving average which suggests you stay away), they should be viewed as only a reversion to the mean trade and managed accordingly.  I will circle back at the point some point in the future when my position has been closed out to see what can be learned from its outcome. 

Wish me luck.

Is Low Volatility Here to Stay?

We've had  90 straight trading days without the SP500 dropping -1%. The last time it happened?  October 11.  Pre-Trump Surprise.  Longest streak since 2006.

Is it Time to Invest in Chinese Stocks?

As a part of our process and before we put client money to work, we check to see if the investment in question is rising against both its benchmark and its US counterpart. Chinese stocks have massively underperformed their US counterparts over the past 5 years as you can see in the chart of the ratio of FXI (China ETF) to SPY (SP500) below. In fact, having money in China over the past 5 years has seen that investment lag the US benchmark by nearly 25%.

Fundamentally, Chinese stocks are more attractively priced, present a better value and potentially much greater upside. Because fundamentals don’t matter (until they do) these situations can go on for much longer than make sense. But like all things, this pendulum will eventually swing back in the other direction and the reason we regularly monitor the world for potential shifts in trends.

Looking at literally hundreds of charts a week, I am seeing some interesting setups in big cap Chinese stocks such as BABA and BIDU. I wrote about another on Jan 9, WB, which is up more than 30% from the date of that post. You can see in the ratio chart above, it bottomed early last year, testing the .15 level a few times before creating a higher high but eventually falling back to retest that level and failing to start a new uptrend. The good news is the possibility of a reversal is not dead yet. With a divergent momentum low in place as a tailwind, I will be looking for a break above the prior high as my confirmation a bottom and reversal of the downtrend is in place before investment capital is committed to an index of Chinese stocks. Until then, even if we consolidate for many more months and break higher, opportunities in some selective, leading Chinese stocks are looking good and worth an investor’s consideration.

Texas Tea

With the stock market stretched and in need of a pullback, I thought it a good time to look back at what oil is doing since it’s been almost 4 months since we last checked in. As I wrote last October, I expected oil to break higher out of the $50 consolidation range which had developed after forming the double divergent low bottom. It took almost 8 weeks, but it finally broke out to the upside at the end of November (and was confirmed with big volume), peaked its head just above $55 in January and then immediately stalled out. It looks like my $77 dollar upside target will have to wait.

Consolidations that occur immediately after breaking out of a consolidation are nothing out of the ordinary. It is a reflection of a market very much in equilibrium. What makes this most recent consolidation of interest is its tight range ($52-$55) and the fact it has lasted 10 weeks. The greater the time period, combined with the small range, pinches the Bollinger bands and warns that whenever it does breakout it will likely be very a powerful move. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us which direction it will go or when. I still give the benefit of the doubt the next move will be higher since that is the direction of the trend prior to consolidation.  

Digging a little deeper for some additional ammo to confirm the expectation for oil higher oil prices, we see in the seasonality chart below the fact we are just coming into a time which is normally very bullish for oil.  Over the past 30 years the period from March through October has seen oil’s price rise an average 15%.

But what about that nagging fundamental data that shows the world is awash in oil and inventories continue to climb? What about the laws of supply and demand that we learned in econ 101?

 As written in the Financial Times …

 “A mystery is confounding the US oil market: when inventories rise, prices rise, too.  That is not the way it is supposed to work. At 518.1m barrels, stocks of crude sitting in commercial tanks are the highest in records dating to the early 1980s. Fundamentals tell us that excess supply should weigh on markets and drive prices lower. But this year a loose pattern has emerged after the US government releases weekly oil data: surprisingly large increases in crude stocks have prompted spurts of buying.”   

Are we living in the Matrix?

 What’s an investor to do?  First and foremost, recognize that price is all that matters and there are always times when fundamentals, logic and common sense don’t matter. As such Its prudent to use them with caution. Times like this typically occur during fundamental shifts or when irrational exuberance has taken control.  The risk averse approach is to sit on the sidelines and watch. The bolder and riskier style is to recognize that uncertainty can offer a chance to pile up big profits and consider throwing caution to the wind and jump in. If the second option is your style, whatever you do insure you have an exit strategy determined before entering and follow it to a tee. Because when it ends, and it will eventually, it usually leads to an equally nasty move in the other direction.