The Disrupted and Momentum Monday

Today’s post comes from my upstairs porch on Coronado…if you put your ear to the picture you can hear the Pacific:

Ivan and I put together another ‘Momentum Monday’ (video is at end of the post). I love doing these and hope you enjoy. Below I outline some of what we discuss.

There is a lot of winning going on if you own the right stocks right now.

Priceline is at all-time highs. I continue to watch and marvel at the ease it shows moving higher. At the same time boomers retire and travel the world, the millennials choose travel experiences over new homes and malls. This trend is global.

Chinese internet stocks continue to rock.

India’s Sensex is at all-time highs.

Visa and Paypal and Square continue to hit all-time highs. This makes sense as consumers continue to spend, just not at malls.

As for the bad and the ugly…

I love this chart from Charlie called ‘The Disrupted’:

This is not a boat accident!

It is no wonder Nike cut this huge deal with Amazon. Everyone should read this piece. Amazon is back at $1,000 per share and Nike is finally showing some strength again.

Yesterday I wrote about the death of the mall. Today, retail stocks were clobbered again led by Abercrombie (down 20 percent) and Best Buy (down 8 percent).

Amazon is going to push their own Geek Squad. The smart homes are owned by dumb people lest you forget.

Retailers are at 8-year lows relative to the S&P:

The automobile part retailers have had a forever bull market but even that seems done. Look at Autozone and it’s competitors:

Software may finally be eating this sector of retail. Thank god we saved the coal industry!

One interesting sign of the times and a potential signal of at least a short term bottom in retailers is today’s launch of ETF’s that allow people to short the brick and mortar stocks. I hate my industry at times like this.

What else is NOT working right now?

Snapchat is down 42 percent from it’s post IPO highs and now below it’s actual IPO pricing of $17.

Telcos (Verizon at 17 month lows), utilities, and General Electric (the worst performing Dow stock of the year). It seems like the hipsters are making their avocado toast with Samsung toasters.

JC is more diplomatic…he says the market may be pricing in higher rates:

The rates rising trade may be a green light for further runs in financials and transports…this is a good view of that trade.

At the same time the market seems to be looking forward at higher rates…never before have mortgage rates been so low while job market is so good.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is worth more than $40 billion and Forbes is hedging itself by calling the market it is hyping a bubble. Cute.

The people standing in front of the S&P bull market have been run over, but good short sellers have nothing to complain about in this market. The robots and quants may be in charge, but they have also made trading more interesting and potentially profitable than ever.

I love the setups and continue to go with the flow.