Colin Cieszynski

Interesting, because it seems a bit more optimistic today. We've been on a rollercoaster ride for almost 2 months now with tariffs. Up and down, day to day, depending on what Trump says or is rumoured. We've even seen 2 or 3 swings in the same day.

It is unusual, because usually we see this on Fridays. Last week, Friday was down almost the entire day and then came back in the last half hour or so during quadruple witching hour. That might be helping propel markets today if people sat on their hands on Friday.

We do have rumours out there that maybe the US will cut back on tariffs somewhere. But a tweet could come out and the whole thing could change again.

Over the last month or so, NA and Australia have underperformed. China has done extremely well, and so has Europe. At a time when US is threatening tariffs against pretty much everybody, it's interesting to see the significant movement in capital with Europe and China attracting money flows.

In Europe, capital is going back in. But not to the same extent as into China, as China was more depressed. Europe has been more quietly climbing, but has held up fairly well. Historically, Europe hasn't gone up and down as much as China has. 

China's the one that's been acting well in the shorter term. He's been looking at the broad-based index, and he's seen broad strength. Consumer and tech names are both doing well, though he hasn't followed infrastructure names as closely.

When you look at country-level capital trends, you look over weeks and months rather than daily or intraday. Sizable shift over the last number of weeks, seems set to continue at least in the near term.

So far, people are continuing to see gold and silver in their traditional roles as safe havens in times of volatility. Gold's up at $3000, and silver's up at $35. They continue to run. Sometimes it looks as though gold wants to consolidate around $3000, but then it just quietly keeps creeping higher, which shows that there's a steady flow of $$ going into it.

He rotated out a few weeks ago. Seeing recent weakness in financials (with $$ also coming out of industrials and consumer discretionary). Chart shows a fairly major breakdown of support ~$78. Now the stock is rolling back up, so it's looking more encouraging. Downtrend line on the chart is ~$81-82, so we'll have to see what happens at that point.

He looks at relative strength, head-to-head battles and who's winning. As money flew out of financials, he sold his position. Big correction at the beginning of February. Picked up support ~$110, similar to the August low. Starting to come back. If it can break out above the trend line ~$125, looks encouraging.

Oil price doing a bit better. Pipeline/utility mid-cap part of energy has done extremely well, holding up better than the producers. Great run second half last year, now sideways range. This is normal consolidation. Acting extremely well, very well supported, picking up within its current trading range.

Good run second half last year. Then a deeper correction, but it's broken out of the downtrend. Established pretty nice support ~$50. Technically encouraging, looks to be back under accumulation.

At his firm, they primarily use point-and-figure analysis. He's also used candlestick charting, moving averages, Bollinger bands, and RSI. For RSI, he doesn't consider going over 70 to automatically be "overbought", as it can stay overbought for a while depending on the chart.

Which timeframe to use depends on your investing timeframe. Day traders might look at intraday charts; so if you're not then don't, because it's more distracting and psychologically upsetting than anything. A swing trader is someone who trades from a few weeks to a few months, and they should look at daily charts. Long-term investors should look at longer-term weekly charts.

At his firm, his hold periods are 3-18 months. So he looks primarily at daily charts.

Great run second half last year, has gone sideways since then. Now breaking out above $68, which is quite positive. It's had lots of time to digest and consolidate.

Big selloff in January, with a lower low in February. Now trying to establish a higher low in March. If it can hold $175, this is a reverse head and shoulders pattern. Looks like a pretty strong technical base forming; for confirmation, need it to break out ~$185-190 to complete the base. If it does, really interesting. RSI still fairly weak.

A lot of NA stocks look like this chart; massive rally from August to Jan/Feb, and then a big tumble. 200-day MA is $116, and it's encouraging that it seemed to bounce right off. So far, getting support and starting to come back. One of the bigger names in consumer discretionary, and cyclical.

Not only the cyclical retailers, but also defensive retail like WMT and COST, got hit hard in the last few weeks. Suggests people were getting concerned about consumer spending, and with good reason. Uncertainty on tariffs, plus huge slowdown on government spending which takes $$ out of the economy. Broad-based corporate profit warnings.

Held up fairly well all things considered, as money's rotated out of large-cap financials. Support is around $74 with the December retest. Bumping up against resistance close to $86. That's the range, and we're waiting to see if it goes through. Financials have started to struggle, so this could go either way.

Extremely volatile chart. Second half of last year was absolutely awesome, then a big selloff down 30% in a day because of DeepSeek, and a recovery bounce back. The tumble afterward is concerning. Near bottom of his RSI rankings. Trying to come back, so far so good.

(Note the short timeframe.)  At the time, market was still in the post-election honeymoon, and the bull market was finally getting to the smaller names. Had a run, and then petered out. Enthusiasm changed on small- and mid-caps, and retrenched to large-cap defensives.