April 2014 - Stockradar

All Aboard

April 30, 2014/by Stockradar

American households are extremely bullish on stocks right now. The US is all in!

I’m still a bull, but this market has naysayers.

Here’s BlackRock’s chief strategist Russ Koesterich:

According to the Fed’s data, the share of household financial assets devoted to cash and highly-rated government bonds has been drifting lower since the end of the financial crisis and has actually fallen below the long-run average.

Meanwhile, the same Fed data also show that investors have steadily moved into ever riskier investments, especially during the recent equity bull market. Americans now hold the largest percentage of their financial assets in stocks, corporate bonds and mutual funds – a loose proxy for exposure to riskier investments – since the third quarter of 2000, near the height of the tech bubble. The percentage of investors’ financial assets in such riskier investments is now 34.9%, just shy of the highest exposure to risky assets since the 1950s – 38.4% in the first quarter of 2000.

Nervous Energy

April 23, 2014/by Stockradar

Here’s Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s technician Stephen Suttmeier with the technical set up:
We highlighted Energy as a sector showing good tactical relative strength. Two signs of relative rehab for the sector that we highlighted in our Monthly Report were
1) reclaiming the prior relative lows from 2010 and 2012 and
2) sustaining the move above the 13, 26, and 40-week moving averages relative to the S&P 500. S&P 500 Energy has done both.
In addition, S&P 500 Energy is pushing to new all-time highs with confirmation from the sector advance-decline line (side bar). The relative set-up for Energy is similar to that of October 2010, when the sector moved above its 13, 26, and 40-week relative moving averages and outperformed until April 2011.