From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

Bonds are digging in at some familiar levels.

For years now, we’ve pounded the table about the importance of the 2018 highs for various risk assets.

That’s because those former highs marked significant peaks for both the stock market and certain procyclical commodities and currencies during the last cycle.

As far as the bond market is concerned, 2018 was also when yields peaked. Benchmark rates in the US are testing these old highs.

As such, it’s not the 2018 highs but the 2018 lows that we’re paying attention to when analyzing the prices of Treasuries.

A handful of bonds and bond funds are trying to find a bottom at these key former lows right now. 

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a chart of the 20+yr T-Bond ETF $TLT:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

Credit spreads are widening to their highest levels since late 2020.

If it feels like we just mentioned spreads and the falling HYG/IEI ratio, it’s because we did – and for good reason! They provide valuable insight into the overall health of the market.

High yield bonds $HYG rolling over faster than US Treasuries $IEI implies stress on credit markets and trouble for equities.

This is critical information.

We’ve been closely following the HYG/IEI ratio for months as it repeatedly tests the lower bounds of its range. It broke down to fresh lows in March, only to bounce higher with many risk assets.

Two months later, this crucial risk ratio is printing fresh 52-week lows again. The main difference is that the overall market environment has drastically changed since the last time we were at these levels.

As we progress into Q1 of Fiscal Year 2022-2023, this playbook outlines our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit.

This playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates, as well as outline our views on the major nifty indices and the sector/thematic indices.

We also cover individual stocks we want to be buying to take advantage of the themes discussed in the playbook.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our May Monthly Strategy Session on Tuesday. ASC Premium Members can click here to access the recording and the chartbook.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

This is the video recording of our May 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

Are you seeing this?

Inflation Protected Treasuries are outpacing nominal yielding Treasury Bonds. We're now at the highest levels since the Great Financial Crisis.

For those new to fixed income, this is the bond market expressing its thoughts about inflation.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

A couple weeks ago we pointed out that the stock market was questioning the rise in rates.

Defensive areas we would expect to underperform in the current environment such as utilities and REITs are actually outperforming.

And the names we would expect to do well – specifically banks – can’t seem to catch a bid on either absolute or relative terms.

This is concerning from a broader intermarket perspective. But it’s not the complete story.

While our stock market ratios are not supportive of higher rates, when we look within the bond market, we’re seeing the opposite.

Not only is there a synchronized global rally in interest rates, but the intermarket evidence from our bond market ratios supports this action and indicates a healthy degree of risk appetite. 

Today we're going to highlight one of those bond market ratios – high-yield vs. investment-grade debt.

Let’s take a look.

This is our ASC Research Q2 2022 Playbook.

With the current market environment giving us many mixed messages, what better time to dive in and see what's happening underneath the surface?

• Stocks (International & U.S.)
• U.S. Sectors & Industries
• Market Breadth & Sentiment
• Commodities
• Currencies
• Intermarket Analysis
• Cryptocurrencies
• New Trade Ideas
• Overall Strategy

This is the video recording of the April 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• The Major U.S. Indexes and Current Technical Analysis
• Commodities making multi-year highs vs Stocks
• Our Sentiment Composite Indicator shows excess Pessimism
• Value Stocks continue to lead vs Growth Stocks
• Energy Stocks and Commodities Trades
• Agriculture Stocks and Commodities
• Base Metals & Precious Metals
• The US Dollar vs US Dollar Index are very different
• Global Markets: Pockets of Strength & Weakness
• Bonds Yields and Yield Curves
• What To Do With These Beat Up Growth Stocks
• Bitcoin Correlations & New Crypto Trade Ideas

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

Treasury Bonds have collapsed in recent months as interest rates have rallied to their highest levels in years.

And it’s not just treasuries, the trend is lower for corporate bonds as well.

While fixed income markets have experienced steady selling pressure since 2021, downside volatility has accelerated in recent months. Following the worst Q1 returns in decades, bonds have continued to plunge to kick off the 2nd quarter.

The best way for us to take advantage of this is to keep finding clean setups to short.

Today, we will outline a couple of shorts in high-yield debt and discuss what a sustained downtrend for these bonds could mean for the broader market.

First up is the High-Yield Corporate Bond ETF $HYG:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

Benchmark yields have moved in a vertical line higher since the beginning of March. This isn't just the case in the US; we're seeing similar action all across the globe.

But as rates rally higher and higher, more and more classic intermarket relationships are failing to confirm the move.

Yes, commodities and commodity-related stocks remain resilient, and bonds are an absolute dumpster fire.

Most other assets we would expect to do well in a rising rate environment simply aren’t. This is especially true for the banks!

Meanwhile, those groups that we'd expect to underperform in this kind of environment, such as utilities and other defensive stocks, are actually outperforming.

All of this speaks to risk-aversion, not risk-seeking behavior.