I’m always thinking about the strongest stocks.

Over the intermediate term, consumer discretionary is on top, rallying more than 40% off the summer lows.

So this is one of the areas where I’m searching for strength right now.

It’s the traditional top-down exercise for picking stocks.

The best way to go about it is to use the relative trends and drill down from sector, to industry, and eventually all the way to the individual component level.

While doing this today, I was flipping through my discretionary industry charts, and the relative ratio for Homebuilders really stood out. 

Here it is retesting a massive base breakout level from above.

We’ve been talking all about the lack of follow-through in recent weeks.

Fons just wrote an excellent post about failed breakouts. Upside resolutions won’t stick. We’re seeing it all over.

But, there’s more to the story. Breakouts failing to print is just one half of it. 

BreakDOWNs are not sticking, either. 

There is simply no directional bias in either direction. Resolutions are hard to come by. False starts, failed moves, and whipsaws are the norm. Both bulls and bears are getting chopped up and shook around.

I wanted to share a few failed breakdowns that stood out to me today, as this is an important distinction to make in a messy market environment.

Here’s Energy $XLE:

I was talking to a colleague this morning and I told him I feel as if I do my best analysis when I'm writing about exactly what I'm doing in the market.

So today’s post is about Solana and why I’m closing my entire position… at least, for now.

Solana has been my largest and most profitable investment of the current cycle. It’s made up over 50% of my crypto exposure for the past 12-15 months.

But I’ve sold just about all of it over the course of the past few weeks.

As most of you know, I try to invest alongside the primary trend.

I got into the trend reversal on time, and now, I feel it's time to leave the party. With each passing day, I feel more and more like I’m overstaying my welcome.

Here’s what SOL looked like when I added the bulk of my bull market exposure over a year ago:

Consumer discretionary stocks have been the best stocks over the intermediate term.

The Discretionary Sector SPDR $XLY is leading all other sector indexes over the trailing three and six months.

When we dive beneath the surface, this strength is being driven by a variety of retail stocks.

The largest retailers have led the charge for discretionary, as is the case for most sectors.

Here is the market cap weighted VanEck Retail Index $RTH, trading just off all-time highs:

We were super bullish on banks in the back half of last year.

They were the ultimate Trump trade ahead of the election.

The SPDR Bank Index $KBE rallied 45% from its summer lows to its Q4 highs.

We wrote about the strong correlation between banks and Trump’s odds to win the election last year. That was the signal for almost all of 2024. If you called the election right, you nailed the bank trade.

And we did just that.

But today’s action in the banks looks a lot different than it did just a few months ago.

We no longer have election odds to trade on, and the market seems to have priced in all the potential deregulation gains… and then some.

SPDR Bank Index is down almost 17% from its December highs.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to learn first-hand from some of the top traders and technicians. 

I’ve gained a deep understanding of VWAP and how to anchor it from my mentor and friend, Brian Shannon. 

He created the anchored volume weighted average price as an indicator and is the VWAP master as far as I’m concerned.

It’s my single favorite tool. I’m using it all day every day. 

In order to use VWAP to gain an edge in the market, you have to know where to anchor it. It’s the most important part. 

I always have mine anchored to January 1st. 

I also anchor them at key highs and lows. For example, most of my charts have VWAPs from the 2022 bear market lows as well as the 2021 bull market highs. 

I anchor them from big earnings reactions and news events. These are always good. 

Whenever JC is out, the Morning Show becomes the Strazza Show. 

I invite some of my closest friends on for the guest segment, and we bring the analyst team members on for a free-for-all market discussion. It’s a blast.

Today, we had an extra special guest, David Lundgren.

I’ve learned so much from my conversations with Dave over the years. 

One of the big lessons I credit to him is the importance of outlier trades. We spent a good chunk of time discussing this on my Off The Charts podcast a few months back.

But, I’ve also learned the importance of having big winners first-hand over the years. Figuring this out has been quite the journey, and it has made all the difference for my trading.

I believe in being overly aggressive and making as much money as possible in bull markets. 

Happy Friday everyone

I would like to give a special shoutout to Tesla and congrats to all the bulls.

This week's new all-time highs mark an end to the longest and largest drawdown in company history.

Here’s the chart:

And now we can officially say that all of the Magnificent Seven stocks have made fresh all-time highs this cycle (and this year).

How magnificent. But it gets better. 

Did you know there is a Chinese equivalent for all the top tech companies in the United States? 

They do not import our technologies like most countries. They ban them. Then, they copy and recreate them with new names. 

I love this clip from Silicon Valley, an old HBO show that poked fun at this. It was spot-on about a lot of things.

For purposes of this discussion, I ask you to forget any of your feelings on intellectual property theft and the general geopolitical concerns about Chinese technology. This has nothing to do with any of that.

This post is about making money on an emerging area of the international equities market.

There is a brand new bull market shaping up over in China. This is one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world. It is also home to some of the most innovative technology companies outside of America.

Speculative growth has been one of the hottest corners of the market in recent months.

At the group level, it’s a brand new uptrend for this risk-on basket of stocks.

The ARK Investment flagship fund ARKK is my favorite barometer for the spec-tech space, and it just completed a trend reversal with a bang. 

But it isn’t alone. 

A growing list of indexes are completing textbook reversals and embarking on new mark-up phases.

Alfonso pointed out the Retail Index $XRT as a good example of this theme the other day. Retail stocks are resolving from a rounding bottom and hitting their highest level in years.

When we look back and discuss the bull market that began in 2023, what will we say?

I think we will talk about the artificial intelligence revolution and all the technology stocks that benefited most from it.

Maybe we will say this is when Nvidia changed the world and paved the way for so many new innovations and efficiencies.

I think there’s a good chance we’ll be talking about some other companies we haven't even heard of yet.

I don’t know how this story will end, but I do know it will be all about AI.

That should be clear to everyone by now.

And while I may not be the most tech savvy guy, I know the rise of AI has everything to do with advanced computer chips made by Nvidia and others.

As they say, you can’t have a party without the chips.

And the chips have really fueled the current bull market party. SMH rallied more than 3x in about a year and a half, kicking off the new bull market. 

It is still one of the top-performing industry groups this cycle, despite going sideways for the last six months.

With so many stocks joining in on the bull market, it can be hard to keep track of leadership.

But one group that definitely stands out and deserves a mention is Uranium and Nuclear Energy.

These stocks were big leaders during the commodity bull run of 2020-2021, and they have been major leaders again in recent months.

But, it’s less about the recent relative strength, and more about the structural patterns at play.

Here’s the industry leader, Cameco $CCJ breaking out of a monster base: