2/ Gold has completed a classic bull market correction from extreme overextension. I wrote about this on Sep 23rd where I talked about the historical tendencies of these types of pullbacks, and why gold would continue to sell off.
A screenshot of that report is below.
3/ We've now seen a:
- Peak to trough drawdown of 20% vs avg of 21%
- We're in the 187th trading day of the correction vs
avg of 255 before new highs
- A dip below the $1,700 level
We bought back in on March 31st after completion of the double-bottom
4/ The EXTREMES in sentiment and positioning that we saw over 8-months ago, have not only been reversed but are now showing EXTREME levels of pessimism.
This is what you want to see for a durable bottom to form.
5/ We've seen massive outflows from gold ETFs since December.
6/ The % of miners trading above their 200-day is turning up from DEEPLY oversold levels (sub 20%).
These types of oversold conditions WHILE in an uptrend tend to be powerful buy signals.
7/ Our Precious Metals Extreme Buy/Sell Signal triggered two back-to-back buy signals last month, which has so far marked the bottom.
8/ Silver continues to outperform gold which is exactly what you want to see in a cyclical PM bull market.
9/ PMs tend to be great technical trading markets. They have high fidelity to their setups
The monthly chart in $SI_F is textbook
This is similar to the compression regime I wrote about in March 2019, when we first turned bullish on precious metals.
Some thoughts on what's driving this action and whether it'll develop into a larger selloff or if this is just a period of chop and vol before another leg up. First, obviously, trend fragility was high so this type of action is to be expected when positioning is this ext 1/
2/ The market is repricing the growth/inflation outlook. Consensus GDP estimates were around 4.2% at the start of the year. Growth is likely to come in well above 6%, so the market is frontrunning the Fed and pricing in rate hikes earlier than what the Fed has communicated.
3/ This is sending yields across the curve higher. When looking at yields we're concerned with not just the level but also the speed at which they raise. And 10yr yields have risen at a pace that typically leads to bouts of volatility
1/A LOT of critically important charts in this week's #DirtyDozen.
I cover growing trend fragility, a monthly sell signal, discuss why this *isn't* a major top buy why we should expect a 1-2 month correction to begin w/in the next few weeks, plus more.
-FMS cash level at 3.9% triggering a 'sell signal'
-Global Risk-Love in 97th %-tile going back to 1987
-Asia/EM Risk-Love signaling "euphoria" for 1st time since 2015
3/ “Two-month flows into DM and EM equity funds the highest since [Oct 2000]. November alone saw the highest monthly inflow into global equity funds on record. Also over a three-month horizon, we’ve now seen the highest inflows into equity funds on record” via BofA $EEM
"This paradox is absolutely central to the working of all financial markets... The more bullish things are, the more bearish they are." ~ Percival's "The Way of the Dollar"
Markets are paradoxical & circular. Understanding its many circular relationships is crucial.... /1
2/ ...to groking its true nature. The price-sentiment relationship is one of these. Prices rise=sentiment follows=positioning adapts=criticality is reached = prices reverse = sentiment follows, ad infinum...
Every trend sows the seed for its end. Trend + reversion = sine waves
3/ Another critically important circular relationship is that between stocks & bonds.
No financial asset exists w/in a vacuum. The game of markets & the act of valuation is one of relative comparisons. Stocks and bonds compete for flows...
The Palindrome (Soros) broke FX factors down into simple logic statements (the below example is taken from "The Alchemy of Finance"). He did this in an effort to gain a better understanding of the drivers of a trend and the sustainability of that trend... /1
2/ These drivers shifts over time, from regime to regime. This is one of the reasons why the FX is notably hard to forecast. Players often key off the thing that worked during the last cycle while missing what’s driving the current one.
3/ The most recent USD bull market that kicked off in 11’ was driven by an equation that looked something like this.
DXY = US V > RoW V (rest-of-world) = ↑(i+e+m) → s↓ → e↑
US growth was stronger on a relative basis (accounting for the US premium) than RoW (US V > RoW V).
"I don’t believe in edge. I think it’s a fairy tale. The world is too competitive. Going back to AI, investing is where chess was in 1996... "~@GavinSBaker
This is a killer interview with Gavin on how to think about edge in investing. Some thoughts👇 /1
2/ At MO, we often write about how anything that can be quantified will be arbitraged by machines. A world of alt data, satellites giving coverage of consumer traffic, drones beaming infrared signal at oil-storage to gauge inventory, etc = The mrkt becoming hyper-efficient.
3/ This is why discretionary investors need to extend their analysis timeframe. Gavin says that "all alpha comes from insights. An insight is a kind of a differentiated long-term viewpoint about a stock. It's a differentiated view about the long-term state of the world."
THREAD: The market is like a magician. It pulls your attention to one hand while stealing your watch with the other. The biggest trends kick-off when no one’s looking. The most contested areas of the market — the stocks everyone is talking about — do nothing.
2/ The fact that our hive mind is instantly embedded into the market price inherently means that most large moves will surprise most participants. After all, if everyone was already expecting it, it would have already happened.
3/ To catch the magician in the act we need to contrast what everyone is focusing on with what's *actually* happening in the tape. We can do this by looking at the Hierarchy of Technicals macro-ops.com/the-hierarchy-… which allows us to build a coherent picture from mltple data points