The U.S. market is closed on Monday for Presidents’ Day, which means that our market will likely be rather quiet at the start of the week. Overall though, the bullish trend is strong and has been for some time. I rang some alarm bells last week, although it seems that I was wrong. This doesn’t mean that we should all rush out and put on a thousand new long positions. Patience, caution, always.
The weather in the northern parts of South Africa is likely to be a little wild in the week ahead. We just hope that the hurricane that has made landfall in Mozambique does not cause large scale damage. Spending the week indoors, sadly, is nothing new thanks to lockdown. Now we just have to hope that the coal stays dry so that we don’t have electricity disruptions. These are strange times to be living in to be sure. At least we have markets to look at and keep us busy while a hurricane and a virus rage outside.
Fresh new stimulus cheques in mail and record high options trading volumes. The market is a very confusing place right now to be honest. Well, maybe not actually. It’s fairly obvious that stimulus money is finding its way to extremely speculative trading instruments (which includes Bitcoin) and that the greed ruling markets at the moment is firmly cemented in place. Even with all this additional money in the system diluting its value, the mighty Dollar is fighting back and strengthening.
Markets open for trading on Monday and our thinking is that the major theme for the week ahead is going to be stimulus, gold and Bitcoin.
There are still a few weeks to go before Christmas, but hopes of a Santa Rally are starting to take root. For now, most of our watch-list still appears bullish, although there are some warning signs. We could be seeing some early signs of fading momentum on the major indices, although it might still be too soon to tell.
The exuberance of markets can never be underestimated. “Stonks only go up” has become a meme. But we know that memes have the power to influence millions of people. As long as the market is trading from vaccine headline to vaccine headline, we can expect that markets will probably keep pushing higher and people will likely keep chanting “stonks only go up”.
Finally the US election is behind us! We’ll still see how far Trump goes to contest the election outcome, but so far it seems the the courts are not entertaining the idea. So ok, Biden wins, what now? It is reasonable to expect that more COVID related stimulus will done and the Dollar should keep weakening on that. This likely leads to more ZAR strength and might direct some investment flows into emerging markets.
Generally markets are feeling fairly good going into next week and the weekly game plan is centered around buying some pullbacks in the banks and avoiding long positions in resources and precious metals. We have been seeing good old fashioned sector rotation locally, with funds flowing into banks and retailers and seemingly local property as well. This is likely being driven by investors looking for value, of which there is much to be found among the ‘locals’.
Overall markets are feeling a little ‘in the middle of nowhere’ at this stage and thus our weekly game plan is to mostly be patient and wait for better setups. We look at some of the major U.S. indices and note that there are no really good setups to be had at this stage, although Gold, Sliver and Oil might be setting up for some decent trades. On the local front, we’re probably complaining too loudly about low volumes, but there seems to be a select few good setups.
Every week in 2020 seems to get stranger and stranger. Last week we saw the death and rebirth of stimulus talks and Trump uses his ‘art of the deal’ tactics to look good for the election. Make no mistake, the election is a big deal and it’s coming closer. Odds are that volatility will pick up a little heading into the election and thus we’re happy to take it very slowly. That said, markets are looking generally strong and confident at the moment.
We really appreciate you reaching out. We will be in touch with you within two business days.
