Editor's Note: This article was originally published in John Murphy's Market Message on Thursday, August 15th at 3:47pm ET.

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Everyone's talking about inverted yield curves. The 10 year - 3 month yield curve turned negative a few months ago. The 10 year - 2 year spread turned negative for a brief time yesterday, but hasn't officially inverted yet. For that to happen, the 10-year yield needs to drop below the 2-year yield, and stay there for awhile. But it's getting close enough to get people worried. That's because inverted yield curves have a strong history of signalling economic recessions. There is, however, something different about the current situation. And that's the direction of commodity prices.

The gray area in Chart 2 plots the ten year - two year yield curve. As of yesterday's close, the 10 year yield was one basis point above the two-year. It's still positive, but barely. The brown bars plot the CRB Commodity Index. The last two yield curve inversions took place during 2000 and 2006 (red circles). Both led to stock market peaks and economic recessions within a year. Notice, however, that the 2000 inversion was accompanied by rising commodity prices (first box). In fact, crude oil prices tripled during 1999 which forced the Fed to raise short-term rates enough to push them above long term yields. Commodity prices also surged during 2005 (second box) which again forced the Fed to tighten, which led to an inverted yield the following year. Both of those yield curve inversions had bad endings. And rising commodity prices had a lot to do with them. This time is different.

The brown bars show commodity prices in a steep downtrend over the last decade. And they're down again this year. That's especially true of agricultural commodities, industrial commodities (like copper), and energy prices. Gold is the only commodity winner this year (along with silver). But that has more to do with falling global interest rates than rising inflation. [Gold is often incorrectly viewed as just an inflation hedge. But it's also a good hedge against deflation which is its current role].

What makes the current situation unusual is that we have very little experience with what's causing the current inverted curve, or the threat of one. Previous yield curve inversions were usually caused by short-term yields rising faster than longer-term yields. The current inversion is being caused by longer yields falling faster than shorter yields. Falling commodity prices at this late stage of an economic expansion are also unusual. That also makes this time different. The absence of commodity inflation, however, also carries some risk. History shows that deflation can be just as dangerous as inflation. And it's a lot harder to fight. Just ask central bankers.

Chart 2

Wow, it's been a great ride here at StockCharts.com!

I posted essentially this same article in my Trading Places blog a week ago, but I'm not sure how many of you follow me there. I want to make sure I reach out to everyone who has supported me over the years. I've been writing in ChartWatchers since 2006 and thank all of you that have read my content. It's truly been a privilege to write alongside the absolute best technical analysts on the planet!

The ride's not completely over, but I'm making a big change (and with mixed emotions) as I leave my role as Sr. Technical Analyst at StockCharts.com, effective September 15, 2019, and return to EarningsBeats.com as its Chief Market Strategist. There are a couple reasons for the change, which I'll get to in a bit. First, however, I'd simply like to say a few thank yous.

Thanks first and foremost to the StockCharts.com team. I've contributed to the FREE weekly ChartWatchers newsletter since 2006, but it wasn't until I officially joined as a Sr. Technical Analyst in March 2015 that I truly realized the platform that I had been given. It was an opportunity for me to pass along everything I've learned and continue to learn (i.e. costly mistakes). I absolutely love what I do. I've paid LOTS of stock market tuition over the years, but it's all been in an effort to improve my skills and knowledge. I think anyone who has ever been involved in the stock market can relate. Two of my biggest passions, other than faith, family and golf, are the stock market and teaching, and there could never have been a better opportunity for me than joining StockCharts.com. From Chip Anderson, President, to Kellie Erlandson, Business Manager (and fixer of all things business), to Bill Shelby and Grayson Roze, who both helped me get started with my webinars by co-hosting, to the developers of the greatest stock market tools in the universe, to customer service to the video production team (who has had to put up with my really bad puns and jokes for nearly two years!) and, of course, to my fellow technical analyst colleagues (the finest collection ever assembled on one website), I could not have asked for more support. These last four years have been among the best of my life and I'm truly grateful and thankful to everyone at StockCharts.com. I now have lifelong friends and great business partners to show for it. My relationship at StockCharts hasn't ended, by the way, but my role will be changing. More on that below.

My second GREAT BIG THANK YOU (!!!!) goes out to all of you. I cannot put into words all the support I've received during my tenure here. Whether you've read or subscribed to my daily Trading Places blog or to the ChartWatchers newsletter, watched my webinars a couple years back, attended ChartCon or perhaps a live seminar where I've taught, been a regular at MarketWatchers LIVE on StockCharts TV, sent me encouraging and supportive emails, or even ridiculed my mostly bullish calls (lol), I have truly appreciated your support. As I move on to my next role (or back to my prior role? Maybe my next blog should be titled "Back To The Future"), I will be looking for your support as well. It would be awesome if you'd support me this weekend, as I'll be joining John Hopkins on Monday, August 19th at 4:30pm for the latest "Top 10 Stocks" webinar, where I'll unveil the 10 latest stocks that will make up my Model, Aggressive and Income portfolios. These portfolios have been powerful, as the results since their respective inceptions would confirm:

Since November 19, 2018 (and through the Thursday, August 15th close):

Model Portfolio: +44.36%

S&P 500: +5.83%

I've used a "User-Defined Index" to track my portfolios. The following chart shows the superb performance of the Model Performance:

Since May 19, 2019 (and through the Thursday, August 15th close):

Model Portfolio: +10.93%

Aggressive Portfolio: +12.31%

Income Portfolio: +5.57%

S&P 500: -0.42%

I rotate stocks every three months in each portfolio based on excellent quarterly earnings reports and impressive relative strength. Investing in leaders in leading industry groups with solid management teams is a winning combination, as those results will attest.

Come join me at EarningsBeats.com and let's continue the ride together! CLICK HERE for more information and to sign up for a $7 30-day trial special, which will provide access to the stocks revealed in each portfolio!

So what will my future role be at StockCharts.com?

Great question and I'm glad you asked. Answer: I'm not sure. Thanks for the question. Next question!

All kidding aside, some of this will be determined as we move forward. I have a wonderful relationship with the entire StockCharts.com team and look forward to continuing that. They are very supportive of my decision. Here's what I can say today:

1. ChartWatchers. I fully intend to write my ChartWatchers articles every other week as I have been since 2006. It's been 13 years and counting. I won't change a thing.
2. Trading Places. Hhhmmmm. I honestly don't know at the moment. I've been writing that blog daily since September 2015 after Chip requested it (suggested? sorta demanded? lol). I actually volunteered to do it. I love to write about the stock market, and everyone should know by now that I can be quite "opinionated" from time to time. It was really an easy decision for me to write daily in this blog, however, as I review the stock market every single morning. So it really was simply a case of me writing down my thoughts and sharing a few charts. If you haven't noticed, my Trading Places blog articles have mostly been published EXACTLY at 9am EST nearly every single morning since September 2015. You have NO IDEA how much it upsets me if I am a minute late. It was part consistency with a HUGE dose of OCD. I remember my dad many years ago, waiting on our front porch for the newspaper to be delivered at EXACTLY 6:30 so he could read the news and sports pages. Heaven help that 11-year old boy if he arrived at 6:35! My therapist says that memory apparently still lingers. :-) So I've tried to publish exactly at 9am EST so that my readers can agree or disagree with me just before the morning bell tolls on Wall Street at 9:30am EST. It wasn't a coincidence. Yes, I'm that anal-retentive and I'm sure it will follow me to EarningsBeats.com. This is a really long-winded answer (well, technically I haven't yet given you an answer so it's getting even longer), but I'll publish exactly as I have through September 15th. At that time (or possibly before), I'll decide. I might continue publishing as is. Or I might publish that content at EarningsBeats.com, requiring membership. If I do that, I'll continue publishing "something" here at Trading Places, I'm just not sure how much, how often or what the level of content will be. All of that remains TBD (to be determined). Feel free to offer up suggestions. You can email me at "tomb@stockcharts.com" about any thoughts, questions or concerns you might have. I'd love to hear from you and will try to respond to everyone (although I will be out of town this weekend, so you might not hear back from me until after the Monday webinar).
3. MarketWatchers LIVE. I will continue this flagship show into the foreseeable future. My plan is to obviously host through September 15th; after that, I'm open to whatever StockCharts decides. I have always wanted to do a morning show. For those of you that have followed me for many years, you may recall that I used to do a national radio show, "Market Open LIVE", which I co-hosted with John Hopkins, President at EarningsBeats.com and a friend of mine for more than 30 years. It was broadcast in 22 cities around the U.S. and focused on technical analysis. I was actually introduced to StockCharts during 2006 as a result of this radio show. But can you imagine trying to explain the "MACD" to radio listeners, many of whom didn't follow technical analysis? I probably sent listeners to the nearest McDonald's for a "Big Mac D". Nothing is confirmed as of yet, but I'll likely be doing a 30-minute morning show a couple times a week.

It's not that I don't love doing MarketWatchers LIVE, because I do. But it's at noon EST, which is right in the middle of my day and handcuffs my ability to golf (refer to my favorite things in life above) until later in the afternoon. Did I just say that out loud? Oops! Unlike Fed Chief Jerome Powell, I like to be transparent. (I had to throw at least one dig in at our Fed Chief.)

Why am I returning to EarningsBeats.com?

There are three primary reasons why:

• First, in November 2018, I developed a proprietary method of selecting 10 stocks to be held for three months (through one earnings cycle). It starts with fundamental research as I review thousands of earnings reports to weed out tons of companies. In order to be included in my "Model Portfolio", companies MUST beat their quarterly revenue and EPS estimates (absolutely no exceptions - ZERO). It's a simple indication of a management team executing its business plan. It's probably also the result of me being a CPA, but if management makes big promises (estimates) on a forward-looking basis, why should I believe them if they just failed to meet their last promises??? No thank you. PASS! Once I find the companies that beat expectations as to both revenue and earnings, I look at their charts with 3 primary questions. (1) Is the chart technically-sound? (2) Is the company performing at least reasonably well on a relative basis to its peers and the benchmark S&P 500? (3) Is the stock liquid (trading at least 200,000 shares daily on average)? If the answer to those 3 questions is YES, then I'll add the company to my "Strong Earnings ChartList", which is simply a watchlist for stocks that I might be interested in trading. This list can have up to a few hundred names on it, so EarningsBeats.com members would ask, "What are your 5 or 10 FAVORITE stocks on this list?" I began scouring my Strong Earnings ChartList and provided my Top 10 names in a webinar on November 19, 2018. Thus my Model Portfolio was born. The 10 stocks are equally-weighted in 10 different industry groups, changing every quarter based on current market conditions and shifting relative strength. In other words, there is typically a 100% turnover rate each quarter. Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) is the only stock to have been included in my Model Portfolio in two consecutive quarters thus far. If you've seen the performance of restaurant stocks ($DJUSRU) in 2019 and the relative performance of CMG, then you'll know why it's still in that portfolio. Since its inception on November 19, 2018, my Model Portfolio has risen 44.36%, while the benchmark S&P 500 is up 5.83%. In a world where nearly every mutual fund underperforms the benchmark and portfolio managers would love to beat the S&P 500 by 1 percentage point, my Model Portfolio performance has been both astounding and outstanding all at the same time. The performance has been SO strong that EB.com members have asked for two more portfolios - a more Aggressive Portfolio, which concentrates on the best relative performers in the small-cap and mid-cap arena, and a conservative Income Portfolio, with more defensive, household names that show excellent relative strength and pay healthy dividends. These two portfolios debuted on May 19, 2019; their excellent performance vs. the benchmark S&P 500 was provided above.
• Second, and this one really could be listed first, returning to EarningsBeats.com allows me to join my daughter Erin, who was hired by EarningsBeats.com earlier this summer. Erin is a CPA and left public accounting a few months ago - just as I did in 2003. She grew tired of working 60 hours a week in a very stressful environment. So now she's at EarningsBeats.com, working only 58 hours a week in a very stressful environment. Congratulations on the great career move! On a serious note, Erin's very bright, is a self-starter and is very eager to learn more about the stock market. And I love to teach. Need I say more? EarningsBeats.com members have already been giving Erin rave reviews. I've always said I wish I could go back and teach my 25-year old self everything that I now know. Well, going back and teaching my children is the next best thing. I simply can't pass up this opportunity to help her explore what could be a life-changing experience for us both. Erin also is two things that I'll never be - young and female, two demographics that she'll have a much better opportunity to reach than me. I absolutely love the prospect of helping my children realize their dreams. What parent doesn't, right?

Despite loving everything that I do at StockCharts.com, this is really a no-brainer.

How can you support me?

In whatever way you feel comfortable. For those not in a position to sign up for a paid membership at EarningsBeats.com, simply continue reading my blog articles, listening to my StockCharts TV shows, etc. Continue learning more and more about the importance of strong earnings and relative strength in beating your benchmark, whatever that might be. There is a free EB Digest newsletter that you can subscribe for at EarningsBeats.com that would be a great way to learn and to improve your investing/trading skills.

For those in a position to pay for a membership, I would really like for you to experience everything that EarningsBeats.com has to offer. There's an "almost" painless $7 30-day Trial that will get you the following:

• 30-day full membership
• A seat to my Top 10 Stocks webinar on Monday, August 19th (unveiling of Portfolio stocks)
• Our Strong Earnings ChartList (will provide you the entire ChartList, over 300 stock charts)
• Access to all 30 portfolio stocks with annotated charts (working to add this to website)
• Intraday trade alerts on select stocks from the Strong Earnings ChartList
• So much more!

It's a great service that I believe will enhance your education and investing and trading success. As you can probably understand, we are making considerable changes to the EarningsBeats.com website as I write this, to include my return as Chief Market Strategist and much information relating to my three portfolios. Up until today, I've shared my stock selections with the EarningsBeats.com community each quarter, but the picks were mine and previously excluded from the website. That is now changing and will be a focus on the website. However, please be patient as we make those necessary changes.

This is a very long article, so if you're still with me, CONGRATULATIONS! I'm really excited about my new (and returning) role as Chief Market Strategist at EarningsBeats.com and I hope you will continue to follow me in my journey!

Thanks for all of your support and of course.....

Happy trading!

Tom

Relative Rotation Graphs, or "RRGs", were born while I was working as a sell-side analyst for an investment bank in Amsterdam, doing research and making calls on stocks and sectors. The clientele of the bank were all institutional investors, ranging from pension funds and endowments to hedge funds.

One thing these PMs and fund managers all have in common is that they are interested in relative performance. The pension fund and the endowment are looking to beat a "benchmark" while the hedge fund manager is looking for absolute return, but, as they usually play the short-side of the market as well, they are very often interested in pair trades to mitigate general market risk. That also requires a "relative" view.

Selling research to an institutional client base is a pretty competitive environment, as you are up against all other analysts on the street, meaning that you need to "stand out from the crowd." RRG was my way to get out of the box and show trends in relative strength in a different way.

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Using RRG For More Than Just Sectors

Because of my role at the time, I was pretty focussed on the equity markets and its sectors, which was my primary universe for use with Relative Rotation Graphs.

When I moved on to a new role as a fund manager for an asset allocation fund/investment company, I started using RRG for other applications as well, which was when I really started to understand and appreciate the versatility and power of this type of graph. RRG can really be used as a tool for a top-down approach to markets, giving you a high-level overview of the markets in various layers.

Discussing RRG on MarketWatchers Live

Last week Thursday and Friday, I substituted for Erin as co-host on MarketWatchers Live with Tom Bowley, where we had some interesting discussions and examples of use-cases for RRG. If you have not seen these shows, please go to our YouTube channel and have a look, as there is a decent chance you will pick some fresh ideas - particularly in the Friday show (8/16) , where we talked about how to use RRG for analysis of the yield curve.

In the past few days, the yield curve for US government bonds has been making a lot of headlines again - or, more specifically, the inversion of the yield curve is making headlines.

For the yield curve itself, we have the "Dynamic Yield Curve" tool, which is actually a pretty cool piece of equipment as it allows you to visualize the change in the yield curve over time in an interactive way.

Dynamic Yield Curve tool

When you click on the image above, it will take you to the yield curve tool on StockCharts.com. This will be a very beneficial tool for tracking the movements of the yield curve and (double-)checking if there really is an inversion or if the curve is steepening or flattening.

The Yield Curve tool above will show you the current state of the curve and, by using the snapshot and trail length functions, you can see its movement over time. When you, like me, are interested in the relative movements of the various segments on the curve, RRG can help you get a handle on that.

Visualizing Yield Curve Movement on RRG

In order to visualize the movement of the yield curve, we first need to set up the RRG to do that. It is important to realize that yields are moving inversely to prices. So, when prices of bonds go up, the yield goes down. This is important because RRG tracks prices, so we need price-based instruments (ETFs or Total Return bond indexes) to plot on the RRG.

Theoretically, it would be possible to use yields on a Relative Rotation Graph, but that will "flip" the rotation around. My preferred set of ticker symbols to track the yield curve is the family of bond ETFs provided by iShares. I have added these ETFs to the RRG below:

These ETFs track the various segments (maturities) on the yield curve. For the benchmark, I have used IEI, which represents the 3-7 year maturities that are (sort of) the middle of the curve.

This RRG still shows you the relative movement/rotation of all these various segments versus that IEI benchmark and against each other.

At the moment, you can see strength at the long end of the curve, maturities 3-7 year, while, at the short end of the curve, BIL and SHY are in relative downtrends vs. IEI. Translating this to yields means that the long end of the curve is coming down while the short end of the curve is going up. This is a "flattening" of the curve, and RRG will show you this movement very clearly.

The opposite rotation, with long maturities towards and into lagging and the short maturities towards and into leading, represent a steepening yield curve.

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Using This Information To Build The Big Picture

In order to build the big picture of events, you need to blend all this information into a framework of thoughts. A good tool/approach to do this, IMHO, is by using the business cycle and the connected sector rotation model as a framework.

Two good pages to keep an eye on with this regard are:

1. The ChartSchool article on Sector Rotation Analysis and the Business Cycle
2. The Sector Rotation Model including the table below it on the PerfChart page (scroll down to below the PerfChart)

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My regular blog is the RRG Charts blog. If you would like to receive a notification when a new article is published there, simply "Subscribe" with your email address.

Julius de Kempenaer

Senior Technical Analyst, StockCharts.comCreator, Relative Rotation Graphs Founder, RRG Research

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Want to stay up to date with the latest market insights from Julius?

– Follow @RRGResearch on Twitter– Like RRG Research on Facebook– Follow RRG Research on LinkedIn– Subscribe to the RRG Charts blog on StockCharts

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Feedback, comments, or questions are welcome at Juliusdk@stockcharts.com. I cannot promise to respond to each and every message, but I will certainly read them and, where reasonably possible, use the feedback and comments or answer questions.

To discuss RRG with me on S.C.A.N., tag me using the handle Julius_RRG.

RRG, Relative Rotation Graphs, JdK RS-Ratio, and JdK RS-Momentum are registered trademarks of RRG Research.