Ep. 355 Why It’s Now Paying Off To Invest Beyond U.S. Markets

Sponsored by Wellington Management, pioneering investment strategies for nearly 100 years, visit Wellington.com/USAWelf Hello and welcome to another episode of the Investing with IBD podcast. It's Justin Yielsen here your host and we are coming to you live at 5 p.m. Eastern as we typically do on a Wednesday. It's January 14th, 2026 and thank you so much for joining us. We have a great guest returning to the show. Actually it was almost a year ago, exactly where he was on. It's David Cox, he's a senior portfolio manager over at Raymond James LLC. That's kind of the Canadian version. So you're up north, a neighbor to the north and it's great to have you back, David. Thanks very much Justin, my pleasure and yeah, happy to be back. Yeah, and I should also mention, I neglected to add those letters behind your name because of course you do have the CMT, CFA, gosh, what else do you have, all sorts of combinations. Yeah, you have your own little ticker symbols following you. I do. It's sometimes of course you get ridiculed at various places but it is what it is. Well, I always like having CMT's on because again, we're very technically focused here. There's a lot that we believe that that can tell you and last time you were on, it really struck me how that was exactly what you were doing in a different way sometimes with the long term looks that you were doing with things. But again, I found everything that you were talking about, very, very relatable and it made a lot of sense, especially with the long term buying and I guess searching that you do, screening that you do. But I guess one of the things that does come up for a lot of people and I'm going to count myself in there. I'm not immune to it. I tried to be, but we all kind of have biases. So one of the things we were talking about when we got together was this really is, it seems like a market that is exposing a lot of biases that people have. And maybe people aren't going into the areas that they should be because of those biases. So can you tell us a little bit about your feelings there? Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, biases are important to understand because if we don't understand and acknowledge them, we can end up digging ourselves in areas and avoiding areas, frankly, that aren't conducive to success. And so, I mean, we can have biases, whether it's geographic biases. Of course, most people have a domestic bias and that's as far as I'm concerned is global. Most people can invest in areas and markets that they live in. I mean, we have sector biases. There's people that are biased away from certain tickers and there's people that are biased towards certain tickers. I think it's fair to say when you look at the data in the last couple of years, there's a lot of investors that have shied away from even considering gold bullion because they only have stocks or they only have a balance of, they're biased toward holding their long bonds even as they're falling. It's just one thing after another. So we have to be really careful as investors because if we end up getting stuck and we're not accepting what reality is and our beliefs are effectively working against us, we're stuck in our ways. Yeah, and I think it's one of those things that's so important. I always think back to the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky where again, all these economists had basically said, look, we're assuming these rational players that are making decisions and they really poked so many holes in that in terms of, look, that's just not the way people are. They make decisions that are sometimes very irrational and those biases that they really laid out bear with data on how bad they can be. For sure, and the truth is, it doesn't matter what month or year it is, we all have experienced the same things in markets. We've all experienced opportunities where things have gone up, things have gone down, you know, you've stopped out and something has gone up. But the problem is, if we allow ourselves to be it so affected that we then sort of again are reshaped by behavior that is not the way, you know, not the open-minded, I guess, to me, the way we need to be as investors. We are worse off as far as I'm concerned. So I think it's really important to acknowledge what biases we each have. And I think it's fair to say we definitely can have our own biases. And at the same time, the markets, when they change, especially I think in the last, you know, year, there's been a lot of change. And you don't want to get stuck doing the same old thing just because. Yeah. Now, and to that point, I'm just going to go ahead and start out with a monthly chart here of the S&P 500. This is actually Spy, the ETF. And, you know, one of the things that has really, I mean, after this 2022 bear market that we had, one of the things that has really been, at the forefront is the the Fang Plus stocks, the magnificent seven. This has been where it's kind of been the at least for 2023. I didn't have a great year because, you know, I was trying all these different stocks and it kept on like if I had just gone with those top seven or the index, I would have done so much better. And now I think it's gotten to a point where so many people got used to, oh, it's just about the magnificent seven now that this has started to underperform. And I'm just going to show the daily chart with this, you know, falling below the 50-day moving average line recently with the indexes near highs. So maybe talk about, again, we look at these indexes that are market cap weighted and some of these market caps, you know, for the for the top holdings are really elevated. So how does that kind of introduce a bias into the way people think the market is doing and it's breadth? Well, absolutely. So I mean, all these big companies that make up this ETF and the biggest stocks, of course, we all have their products, we all use their services. And so there's a there's a bias, you know, it's like, wow, Google, obviously, or, you know, Amazon, they deliver every day. So you just naturally assume then that you can participate. And I think that that's what happens, right? You have a period where, you know, these stocks obviously dominate. And then suddenly, it's like, well, yeah, I can own them in all circumstances. And then the market changes because as you pointed out, I mean, these have been relatively weaker. They're not all the same anymore. I mean, there's a big difference between a Google and Microsoft chart right now. Yeah, absolutely. And so from that perspective, it's really, again, important to understand that that in itself is a bias, a bias toward the biggest stocks, the biggest, the services that we use. And I mean, that doesn't look very healthy as far as I'm concerned. You know, that's a 200 day moving average, I believe in on the black line. Absolutely. So as the market changes, right, we have to stop thinking that, you know, the market is being driven by these large stocks because I think it's fair to say right now, and you look through, you know, from a bread standpoint, there's lots of things that are going up. I mean, the smallest of small stocks are rising, the minimum stocks, medium stocks are going up. And so, you know, the truth is, this is not all about these big stocks. And so that would be a bias to sit here and continue to suggest the market is only matters, right, to these big stocks. And it's not true. Well, yeah, to your point, here's the S&P mid cap 400 MDY ETF. Again, very long base, hadn't done much of anything for a while, but that is getting to new high ground. And of course, we've also been paying a lot of attention to the Russell 2000 lately. This is the iShares IWM Russell 2000, which has recently been, again, making a nice move. And even today, if we kind of zoom in there, today's action, very, you know, very decent day, closing at the top of its range and, you know, really nice as opposed to the NASDAQ composite, which, you know, gap down and, you know, it closed at the top of its range, but, you know, certainly did not look like iWM. No, for sure, but here's another example of bias. So did you know that the relative chart of the Canadian small caps divided by the U.S. are hitting 11 year highs? So that means the U.S., the U.S. small caps are actually very weak relative to Toronto small caps. Now the composition, of course, is very different, sectorally. And this is again, where we get into the whole nuance of the markets are different, sectors are different. It's not small, is not small, large is not large. Because again, look at the U.S., we've got what, what is it, 32% technology. So you've got to get that technology bias, if you will, correct in your portfolio, otherwise you could end up sort of suffering when things change. Yeah, well, and things do change. And I feel like there has been a lot of kind of, especially last quarter, you know, the end of the year and even the start of this year, it feels like there's been kind of this sector rotation that's started. But then sometimes it doesn't trend very much. It's like, oh, you have like maybe a couple days where this is looking really good and it looks like the money's going over there and then, boom, you know, it comes wishing right back. I mean, I'm just going to pull up XBI as an example. This is the spider biotech index and, you know, there have been some strong, you know, I mean, a strong day. And then all of a sudden, boom, it kind of, you know, falters. And I do have a position in XBI myself. But yeah. And then today it right back up. So if you get kind of too granular, sometimes you're just getting whipped back and forth. So I guess the question is how do we, how do we kind of follow where the money's going and not get to hung up by our biases? Well, for sure. Because I think you actually just spoke to another bias because when we look at only, let's say daily charts, we see a lot of things that we can't see when we zoom out more. So, you know, time frame bias is also very important. So I make a practice certainly of wanting to always know what the bigger picture is. So I don't get caught making some kind of decision that in context is absolutely perfectly normal. And so when we zoom out, you know, use a weekly chart or, you know, a monthly chart, you often see very different behavior. And in fact, some price activity, you know, depending on what we're looking at, is completely hidden when we zoom out. And so again, it allows us to continue to ensure that we're on the right side of the bigger picture. And then we can act accordingly inside with more, you know, higher frequency. So I guess when, you know, when things do change, everyone wants to be early, right? They want to be the ones that kind of, oh, yeah, I was on this, you know, I was the one that, you know, knew that oil was going to turn around when it was trading negative. And so I plunged all the money in at the bottom and everything. So what is your approach? How do you kind of say, okay, I'm looking at these long term charts that can take a long time to kind of turn the ship around, how do you kind of identify, oh, this is, this is when a change is happening. And I need to, I need to start acting and moving money there for sure. So I always start at the top down. So I mean, from a market standpoint, I want to know what all the markets look like. And I'm talking the big picture. So let's like monthly charts, you know, obviously monthly charts are going up lots of places. But you've just pointed out, you know, there's a lot of, you know, the smaller stocks are starting to move. And globally, there's a lot of stocks and stock markets that are starting to behave pretty well. So with a big global bias and a big, you know, picture bias, if you will, you can start to run relatives. So if the US market, which has been very strong for a very long time, really, bigger picture, it's certainly been an outperformer versus candidate for a very long time. What I want to do is I want to start to use that same denominator and I want to compare things. So now what's happening? When I compare everything to the SB, S&P 500, there's lots of things that are starting to, you know, improve. And so from that perspective, I want to now be biased essentially in lean in the direction of where the new relative strength is emerging. And so that gives us an opportunity to, again, possibly delve into some areas we haven't been before. And that's where we can start to now say, okay, great. The Toronto market, for example, is starting to perform better. And that means we need to possibly pay attention. So I think you do get an opportunity to be able to kind of get in early and lean when you start to understand what is the drives this market? You've now put up on the screen, right? If you think about it, it's the materials have been very prominent. So the gold stocks, the bank stocks have been very strong, much stronger than US stocks. So what you've got on the screen today, and they got kind of clobbered for sure. I mean, there's obviously, but again, headline risk comes and goes too, right? So whether this, you know, this last credit card, you know, headline will matter or not, we'll see. But what you've got on the screen here is a long term, you know, this is like 25 plus years of essentially Canada divided by the US through the lens of an American investor trading the ETF in the US. And so that's been declining, essentially, since, you know, the 2008 highs, right? And you might remember back commodities continued, you know, the US market had peaked in 2007, in 2008, the Canadian market continued to move forward, you know, you had all the fertilizer stocks and the capital front potash, right? Absolutely. Everybody has to eat on the IBD 50 for a long time. And it's like a fertilizer. What? For another bias there. If you're like, well, gosh, this is just to be frank, crap, you know, because I mean, literally, you know, yeah, you missed out on this huge move that happened in that whole sector. We, you know, CF and look, and some of that is happening today. We were talking about NTR, which we put on swing trader today. You know, it's the old potash, right? For sure. It is. And so again, the classic example, right? So the bottom line is in the last year and change now, so probably 14-ish months, Toronto has been performing very well, very well. I mean, you know, granular today, it was up while the US market was down. But the point is, is that this has been an underperformer for a lot of years. And it's got a very different sectoral composition. We don't have the technology that, you know, the US market has. We do not have, we don't have broad-based health exposure. We don't have, it's not the same market, right? And so we've got a very different market. And so the reason this is outperforming, I would argue, is because, you know, the value trade, you know, where we've got a higher proportion to cyclicals, we've got a higher proportion of commodities, financials, is starting to work better. And so to me, this is correlated to what goes on in the emerging markets. It's correlated to what goes on and certainly the gold and every commodity related markets. And so again, that's been happening now for a while. Of course, some people no doubt will be biased away from participating because, you know, they only invest in technology or they only, you know, they don't, they want to buy consistent earnings streams, which don't tend to happen when we're looking at cyclical companies. But it is happening. And it does offer an opportunity because I would argue too that the Canadian dollar, I think, looks like it bottomed a year ago when the whole tariff, kind of, you know, threat was starting. And so from that perspective, as an American, you actually get a possible tailwind because if the Canadian dollar rises, and the Canadian, and the Canadian market rises, this EWC will experience the combined effect of both, which drives that out performance. Yeah. And just as again, as opposed to one of the things you were talking about, as opposed to if you take a look at TSX, which is the index itself, how is this different when you're making the comparison? Right. So to me, like, I want to know what this looks like. It's the same idea. If you look at the middle of the chart there, you know, you've been under performing for 14 years. So what I'm pointing out here is that, you know, we're still like, this is early. This is not like a clear, you know, multi-year uptrend, without question, it is not. The red circle, it's going up, but we're still squinting, right? So I would argue nothing has been missed. If this is suddenly, you know, the story of, you know, the early 2000s, if you look at that chart in the middle, you can see the outperformance. That's Toronto Canada stocks outperforming over the eight, nine years versus the US stock market. It's the place to be, you had to have exposure to Canada and commodities. If you wanted your portfolio to perform better. And so again, are we suddenly entering a period of time that we saw, you know, 25 years ago, I don't know. But the charts, if they're going to turn, this is how they start to turn on the short term. And then they continue to change as we watch time go by. Well, and I guess one of the things that's, you know, difficult and, you know, please, I'm looking for the advice myself here, you know, asking for a friend, let's say, you know, it's, it's hard when all of this talk about AI is dominating headlines. And a lot of this stuff is just kind of boring, right, resources like what, what's new there? So you mentioned, you know, the Canadian dollar and it almost seems like you have to get into the macro economic factors. So how, how much do you dive into those macroeconomic factors or how much are you just saying, look, this is what the chart is telling me. And that's, that's enough for me. Well, it's a great question. And I think the way I would answer it is that the macro factors end up sort of being visible in the charts. And so when the charts are changing, you know, I want to, I want to understand because I'm willing to go and try to understand something. But I don't want the understanding almost first because the truth is, you know, you can have that understanding and that kind of comfort, if you will, fundamental bias, if you will. But then the chart doesn't line up. So, so from a macro standpoint, when you look at the bigger picture here, the last, what, five, six years yields bottomed, right, interest rates bottomed, you know, in a significant fashion, commodities, you know, we're obviously very weak, oil went negative and so forth. But what we've had happen in this, in the time period since, I think it's fair to say that we've definitely seen the continued question of the dominance of the US dollar, which is arguably a commodity heavy idea to push if the US dollar is going to lose some of its, its, its interest because when you look at the east, right, the whole, you know, there's a lot of countries been buying gold and, and that's arguably why gold is rising, right? China has been selling US treasuries. So when you start to put all this together and you say, okay, you know, yields, you know, they have this huge spike up and then essentially they've just been trying to sideways for the last few years. These, these, the yields are not coming down and so from that perspective, you know, to me, the risk is commodity inflation is the risk. And so again, I know the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the ECB, they can all talk down over going to drop rates and all this kind of business. The truth is, is that long term yields are not falling. In fact, Japan, they've just started soaring again. But essentially what's happening is that 10 year plus yields are very firm. They are very tight. So that the T and X, yeah, for example, like, look, that's, that's years of, they're not coming back down, right? So the idea that, you know, yields were zero, effectively, you know, they're not coming back down. And I think investors are still wanting that to happen because we've got a very debt heavy world, you know, every country, every government, every person. We've borrowed too much money and now essentially we've got a bit of a price to pay and I think the market is simply digesting that yield move. So again, to see that yield move and start to understand then what that means, you know, if commodity prices, which were to rise and let's be serious, copper just broke out to rise again. So, you know, that used to be called doctor copper, right? Like the, you know, the PhD in economics, copper is rising and breaking out. How bad do you think the world is? I mean, it, I think it looks like very optimistic to me, right? And I think we have to separate ourselves from the headlines because I think a lot of people get biased away from risk assets because of the headlines. But if copper is going upwards, that to me smells like inflation risk. And inflation risk means those yields, they're not coming back down. In fact, they're going to rise and that has implications. And so we want to know as investors that that is happening because it may affect the markets, you know, in the coming months, in the coming years. And we want to be able to adapt. And if we understand what's happening, that I think it allows us to adapt a little easier when you see that chart and you don't have to operate solely on the chart. It doesn't have a sense. Yeah, no, no. So you've got kind of a thesis and explanation or maybe even a hypothesis for what could happen. And then you're using kind of the chart as your confirmation because I mean, I'll be honest, there have been a lot of times where I've been, you know, let's take COVID for example. I mean, I was pretty sure based on the headlines, we were going to see a more prolonged correction and it ended up being this V-shaped thing. If I had, you know, stuck to my bias of, oh my gosh, this is, this is horrible and ignored the chart. I would have missed out on one of the best bull markets in history. So I guess what, you know, beyond the macroeconomic understanding and everything, what do you do to kind of again combat these biases so that you can participate where, where the puck is moving, you know, as they say instead of where it's been. T-Mobile is reinventing business internet with Super Broadband. Whether you run a small office or a factory of 500 connection is everything powered by America's fastest VIG internet plus Starlink. Super Broadband from T-Mobile reaches every zip code in the US. Super Broadband, a new era of business internet. Visit Super Broadband.com to learn more. This is 5G network based on analysis about who clips VTS intelligence data to age 2025. It's very due to local network characteristics and management, so it requires hardware installation to clear view of this 536-month commitment. For sure. So again, it's, I think it's back to time frame. So when you're looking at, you know, it doesn't matter whether today, you know, you've got a copper on the screen or whether we're looking at, you know, mining stocks. If that area, let's say, has just started to rise. I mean, and this is a really recent phenomenon. Let's be serious. This has not been happening for years. You can see that consolidation. So this is fairly recent. So let's call that, let's call that the beginning of a move. Because to me, that looks very impulsive, which means the buying looks very serious. I mean, it looks like, wow, there's been a lot of price discovery that has pushed prices higher. So now, because we have that, that kind of understanding that, wow, okay, things have gone there, that to me, I don't want to necessarily just chase in and become, oh my goodness, I've watched this for five or six months. But now when I'm looking at a daily chart and you're seeing weakness, let's say, you know, instead of going, oh, wow, you know, some stock is down seven or eight percent. What we want to do is say, hey, we're looking to get it, you know, an opportunity to increase exposure to an area we may not be exposed to because the daily, let's say, chart is giving us now some pullback. So instead of getting fearful and saying, oh, no, you know, the chart is coming down, it's so weak. But remember, that weekly chart looks so healthy and so new. And particularly when something is new, I think that's also very important because it's not sort of widely accepted yet. This has been going on for years. I think it's very different stories. So because of that, so you're trying to create almost your own, okay, if we've got a weekly uptrend, let's say, in mining stocks, now we want to use the daily weakness to be excited and enthusiastic to buy some of these stocks that we may be missed as they've been rallying, right? And if we're only looking at daily charts, I think we're going to get afraid of, you're going to look at the first little dip and you're going to say, "Oh, wow, so glad I wasn't there." But then the truth is, you're going to watch the dip come and go and you're going to carry on it and you've missed the big picture. Now, I guess another part, and I'm just going to stick with XME, which I've always had, frankly, a little bias against this myself because it's such a hodgepodge of stuff. You've got gold in there, you've got silver, you've got coal, you've got steel, you've got aluminum, you've got copper, it's just all over the place. But someone looking at this would say, "Well, gosh, this came out right around the summer out of 60 from this double-bottom pattern or even this long base here, and it's already doubled." A lot of what you're saying on the monthly chart is kind of like, "Oh, this is just starting, but a lot of people might look at this and say, "Well, this move has been so strong, it's doubled. Am I too late?" For sure, and I understand that thinking, and so again, so let's just, I'll tell you exactly how we look at this. The monthly chart, I would argue that is definitely a new trend that is relatively new. So, if we go back to the weekly just for a second, if we put the weekly chart on, we're going to see a little bit more activity, but we can see, essentially, we had that huge move out of the base, then we had that first pullback, right, and you've got a label there with a cup, but to me, that's the first pullback against. So, I usually literally call it that. The first pullback against when something starts, so when you've got an impulsive move that begins, the very first pullback is the least risky time to get involved. By the time we get to the second pullback, the third pullback, the fourth pullback, we're getting older here. So, from this perspective, there's been essentially one pullback on the weekly chart. And so, all I want to do in this context is I want to know what's in here. You've already mentioned it's all over the place. I completely agree, but I can tell you lots of the charts are rising, lots of the stocks from all different kinds of areas. So now, because I would call this a focus area, meaning this is an outperforming area that diversifies, you know, the technology and AI theme, let's say. And so now, what we want to do is start to develop our watch list of how are stocks operating within this? Because I can pretty much tell you that inside of any very strong ETF, whether it's at the industry level or sector level, there's always going to be stocks that are going through their own little pullback correction that offer that opportunity if you're paying attention and saying, "Hey, here's a leader that for some reason has just come down to the 50 day moving average, the 20 day moving average." And that gives you the opportunity to kind of, you know, hop in and participate and get a leg in. And I should also mention that on these charts, the weekly charts at least, I have added on the green line here 34 week for those that were around when David Cox made his initial appearance last year. This was something that you talked a lot about. In fact, I'm just going to bring up just to digress a little bit. I'm going to bring up Lily because this was one of the stocks that you talked about a year ago and you mentioned that, look, if you were using a 50 day moving average line, this was, there was no way you could hold onto the stock for the move. So I know it's a little off topic and I'm going to get back to some international stuff. But I wanted you to just kind of address this idea of how sometimes, you know, that longer term look can really help keep you in something and to your benefit. For sure. So again, we all have biases and we have timeframes, right? And you know, some people are sitting here probably looking at shorter term than daily charts all the time. But I really encourage that no matter what time frame you're operating on, you need to look at at least one longer, right? So if you're always watching daily charts, you need to see weekly. If you're always watching weekly, you need to see monthly. But so I like to use slopes of moving averages. And so, you know, Justin, you've got the 34 week line in there. Maybe you could just kind of point out where it's kind of there as it's hitting amongst a bunch of lines. But when, you know, to me, on a weekly basis, when we've got a long term stock that's been outperforming, which definitely Lily was and went through a period of consolidation. And now, I mean, it's basically back at eyes. So what ends up happening is at some point, of course, there's weakness, right? That weakness starts short term. And then that weakness, in this case, turned what I would call intermediate term. And then started to put some question marks as to long term. But it's spent a whole bunch of months in a base and started chopping around. And so that it's below the moving average. At the same time, that 34 week moving average that you've got there buried behind price is actually falling. So, so when I'm when I'm like the problem with moving averages that I think some people get turned off with is that, you know, when you're dealing with, you know, is it above or is it below? You know, you have whipsawing that happens, especially when a turn is happening. So when something first turns above a moving average, it doesn't really matter what average it is. The chance of it coming back below is way higher because essentially you're right on the average, right? And so it takes some some continuation, if you will, to see the moving average kind of take hold. So the slope of the moving average is actually referring, essentially, to what direction is the average itself going? So, if you look there in Lily, I think you'll see that the green moving average, which we came back above there. What is it? The end of September? That bar is a blue bar there. Yeah, just to the left there. Just to the left, I think you probably have. So there you are coming above the 34 week line. So let's say that I'm like, okay, I know that we monthly chart is still fine, which I do know that's fine. You don't have to put it up, but I know it's fine. So we now are popping it back above that weekly trend line, which I'm going to use my 34 week line. And then we have that first pull back against. In fact, look, two, two, three weeks after that, that's the first pull back after a bit of an impulsive bar. And now the stop comes back to life. And now the average is rising again. So now we've got a stop that's in an uptrend, right? And it's at highs. And we already know again, the monthly chart is strong. So, but you have to know that to sort of be able to see with, you know, with that kind of nuance, if you will, looking at Lily here on this weekly chart. And I think the problem a lot of investors have, because I can see the ramble online is just that everybody is so zoomed in and, and, and, you know, debating about, you know, this stock is not going up. And, but we're talking about today was a bad day. And that has no necessarily relevance to the figure picture. I mean, it's not every stock peaks out just because it goes down today, right? And so that is a problem. And again, that's why I can't encourage enough. The idea of having a process that allows you to ensure you're seeing things in the bigger picture. You don't need to act there, but you at least need to know what direction you would want to act in, right? So if Lily is rising, then we'd want to evaluate pullbacks while it's rising. If Lily is falling and we're holding on to falling, emerging dice. We'd want to evaluate a rally as an opportunity to perhaps lighten up if that's what we're doing. We're caught. Okay, that that was perfect because again, I think that really introduces that a great example of what you just said with that. Oh, it pops out the first pullback opportunity. Again, going back to kind of the international side, you brought up Canada, you brought up the emerging markets. This is EEM, the MSEI emerging markets. Certainly a big part of that is China. Again, you look at the weekly and it's like, oh yeah, okay, this isn't an uptrend. It's kind of right there at it's 34 week and it's 40 week moving average line. But you look at the monthly and this is just basically done nothing for over a decade. So at some point, people start thinking, well, it's due, right? It's due to go. Of course, there's always people on the macroeconomic side saying, look, you know, I've got to buy us against China because they went through this whole period where, oh, you know, they were potentially going to be delisted from the US. And there's always these issues. I mean, we just saw that with what was it? Trip.com today. Regulatory something comes out and bam, the stock is just hammered. So what's your take on kind of again, just this, you know, back to China itself. This is FXI, which is a I shares China ETF as an example. So, so I mean, again, you've kind of highlighted almost the one country that I definitely, you know, I've been burned many times before. Chinese stocks are definitely fraught with what I would call the most like, you know, headline risk is big, right? There's, yeah, there's the delisting, there's the regulatory, there's the whatever. And they all move. It doesn't matter whether it's like, you know, Chinese insurance and Chinese tech, they're all just going to move. And they all sort of trade the same way. And I think nobody admittedly wants to get locked into a trade, you know, like, remember, I mean, Russia stocks were trading. And then they essentially just stopped, right? They weren't even trading in the US, which is a problem. So, so going back to the China. But when you start to dig in, you start to look at some of the bigger, bigger companies, maybe put Alibaba up there, right? So B-A-B-A, when you look at the weekly chart, let's, let's just like the monthly chart, I think we have to say is rising in the last couple of years there. But if we go to the weekly chart, that looks like an uptrend to me. I mean, I'm pretty sure it is an uptrend. Higher highs, higher lows. And so you can see there that the bottom line is, is that, you know, in an uptrend, if we're now sitting here and we're, we're, we're arguably doing better than the FXI. Because I think if you plot Baba versus FXI, you'll see it's in a clear uptrend. So what we've got is a leading stock inside of China. And so rather than necessarily kind of over diversifying, if you will, here we can participate in a pretty clear uptrend. And so we just had a pullback, as you can see, on a weekly basis. And so again, because we know the monthly chart of Baba is strong, because we know the relative strength of Baba is strong, what we can do is we can say, wow, we just had a multi-month pullback in a clear uptrend, that's an opportunity to buy with a lower risk point than we would have to do if we get caught chasing. Because I'm not a fan of buying into that, you know, that 21% is labeled there. Like, and you will not find me chasing into, you know, this concept where we've had stocks gone up for, you know, nine weeks in a row, and suddenly, I'm a buyer. Like, this is not the way I'm going to approach it, right? I'd like that pullback against where we can continue to observe whether the pullback is calm, whether it's collected, or whether it's erratic and violent. And again, could a headline tomorrow morning, shock, and move, Alibaba, of course it could, that we're open minded to that, we still have to manage risk. But that's how I would, I would kind of approach it. So there's a lot of stocks in China that are actually behaving very well. And again, I think it's also important to understand the character of every stock is so different. I mean, this is a very big stock. If you were to contrast this with, I don't know, Billy, Billy, we're not talking the same kind of, let's say, market cap. And so when you have to understand what you're involved with, right? So this is a much smaller company. It's still big, arguably. But this is a much smaller company. And the volatility of these shares is so much higher. So as investors, we have to make a lot of choices. Do we want to invest in stocks? Okay. Do we want to invest in China? What kinds of stocks? And by screening amongst things like relative strength and volatility, I think we can start to get our kind of decision-making in line and start to say, okay, I would be interested in this, but I wouldn't be interested in this, which is important. Well, you know, it's funny that you mentioned the kind of the nine weeks up in a row, because I, you know, back to our XME, or I'm even going to go with SLV, which I mean has just looked vertical lately. So, you know, you're talking about in some ways, it looks like, you know, the beginning stage of a move. But obviously, this is way up there. So is this still where you're looking for a pullback? Because I could imagine, after going up this much, that pullback could be very painful. Absolutely. No, I'm glad you got this chart on. So look at what we're looking at. We're looking at the monthly chart of silver. And, and, you know, in the one hand, yes, we both know that, wow, silver has, I mean, silver has sort. It has been a very, very big move. It's, it's obviously, it's easy to say it's very overbought. It's very extended in the short term. But look at this chart. I mean, that's actually a big multi decade cup with handle pattern. If we actually look at it, that actually only really got going here in the recent, like, it's not that old, right? It's still a new trend. So, so, to me, if we were to get a pullback here, that would definitely be an opportunity to participate. Now, I, you know, full disclosure, you know, I own C E F, which is the central fund, or the Sprott gold and silver, security, you know, the own silver bouillon, but also on gold. So, it's, it's more calm than silver because silver has been, you know, certainly more volatile, but that also means, of course, you've made less, right? But the bottom line is is that, you know, I think, I think the issue when you have kind of, you know, runs like this where you've had this dramatic run is that you definitely, you, you want to sort of say, oh my goodness, I missed it and a story. But then what happens is that, that the bigger picture is still in play here, and this could be in play for a long time, right? When I, when I, I just pointed out, this is a big picture, it just started maybe, right? How high does it go? I have no idea. I don't, I don't like to make forecasts. I really don't. I'd rather just go with the price action. There was some price action in silver itself. If you could maybe just put that back up on the daily chart, Justin, if you just want to jump over to SLV, maybe, on the daily chart, there was price action about a week and a half ago there. Well, it's a little bit hard to see. Actually, right there, right there. Yeah. So that, that down day right there came on big volume there, that first down day, that came on big volume. And if I'm not mistaken, that was a pretty heavy duty reversal, because essentially, you had that kind of, you know, almost a capitulatory day before it. We're up eight nine, maybe even 10%. And then essentially, you have that big gap down against. And that's pretty harsh, right? So again, who's buying after, you know, in this case, I don't know, a multi month overbought route, not me, but somebody is, and that's where it gets hurt. So the bottom line is, I think it's fair to say that these silver is, you know, obviously it's going up. And so now we want to be careful because definitely the pullback could be serious. I mean, a pullback on this chart came back to 50 bucks. It would be back to test the breakout, if you will. The problem is, is that, you know, 85 to 50, that's not the kind of money I'm interested in putting to risk. So that to me wouldn't work as a stop. Right? Makes sense. Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, we talked a little bit about North America. We, we hit on China. I don't want to leave Europe out of the mix. I'm going to just go ahead and put FES up here, unless you have something else that you'd like to take a look at. But, you know, FES is, you know, a Euro stocks ETF. Again, a lot of, a lot of flat action going nowhere for a long time, you know, since 2008. And here we are, you know, now, now at highs after all this time. So, do you go, you know, when you're trying to find out where to go, how granular do you get in terms of region? Or do you say, no, I want to really find the best country that I should be, you know, putting money into or even the best stock of that country. You mentioned like the banks, a lot of these foreign banks that I've been doing very well. Deutsche Bank, UBS, whatever. But, yeah. So, what's your approach there? For sure. So, I mean, sure, here we are starting almost, like almost regionally, right? So, again, we can recognize that this is an uptrend. I'm going to want to plot this versus the US market. Now, I'm going to tell you, this is actually not, like, super interesting on the relative basis, okay, on versus the US market. So, we have to kind of dig a little deeper. So, let's say I've dug deeper, which I have. And so, the European financials, well, they're actually quite a bit stronger. So, like, EUFN is a sector within there, right, that I can say, wow, the financials, which are very well represented in Europe from a market standpoint in terms of how much exposure there is, you know, to all the big names. There's a lot of strength in here. Like, there's a lot of these big companies that are doing very well, you know, the Deutsche Banks and whatnot. And so, you know, the other thing that I love talking about Europe that you just brought it up is that, you know, when you look back a year and a half or so ago, you know, it would have been very easy to get biased if you read the news because I could tell you, you know, they were announcing Germany was in a recession. And the UK was in a recession. What did the stock market do? It took off. And I always like to point that out is that, you know, there's people that will stand around saying, oh my goodness, I can't invest now, you know, the recession is coming. And the problem is is that I love it when you can point out something that just completely proves that ridiculous because it's like, well, if you bought the headline, Germany's in a recession, nice move, you made a lot of money. And that's the problem is that today, you've got the biases, people say, oh my goodness, the market's gone up for too many years in a row, right? And that's a bias as well. The trend is upwards. So once we figured out European financials, to me, what I would do is I would dig in now and I'd look over at the relative strength and see this thing. box that are sitting in here. And what am I wanting? I want something that's relatively stronger than EUFN, right? Because otherwise, I would prefer the lower risk or diverse approach of buying this basket. So I'm pretty confident that you've looked at it. I know you can't just easily do that. But Deutsche Bank, for example, is outperforming EUFN. So Deutsche Bank happens to be an even stronger asset within there. And it's a huge company. And so suddenly, there you go. We've worked down from the top level, down to the sectoral level, down to the stock level, and said, great, here's a set of candidates. And then we move on to the next thing because there's lots going on, right? And when you do that comparison of, you know, again, a lot of times you can just do a simple ratio, one above the other, and you know, see which direction the line is going. How long do you take in terms of looking at that trend? Like time frame wise? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I definitely do not want to say I would not want to do it on a daily. So I do not do it on a daily chart. In fact, I want to see multi years of weekly, because I want to see whether is anything actually happening or we just had a couple weeks up or a couple weeks down. Like to understand, like to me, to get that context of, is this, you know, the start of European financials outperforming? I don't want to just know that they've outperformed for two or three months. Like I need to definitely zoom out so I can see multiple years in front of me. So that's my preferred chart that I would use for relative strength analysis, because I don't want to miss. And I don't want to get too excited when something is not truly worth getting excited, you know, yet, because I'm definitely of the mindset that if something, you know, there is that desire, right, to be early, but the truth is is that, you know, if something is early and it's the start of something big, there is time to participate. And I think that's very, very important. Yeah. No, absolutely. And to that end, you know, speaking of time frames, this is a monthly chart of Bitcoin. And that you provided, you know, and for folks that are wondering what financially in sync is, that's kind of your team over there at Raymond James. And I should also note that on this chart, we have at David Cox RJ, which is a way for folks to follow you and, you know, what you're up to. But, you know, to your point, I mean, a lot of people have made a lot about this pullback that we had in Bitcoin. You know, and, and basically almost blaming it for the ugly fourth quarter, you know, because it's like, oh, well, Bitcoin topped at the beginning of October. And that just tanked the market because all this money was moving out. And, you know, it was getting that institutional acceptance. And so people were taking the opportunity. There was all sorts of narratives there. But gosh, you look at the, you look at the monthly chart. And this just doesn't really look like anything. It doesn't. And that's why again, this is like how it's almost ridiculous to say, like, you look at these headlines and like, Bitcoin is crashing as like crashing. I don't see any crash. I don't see any, I don't see any prominent candlestick there in the last few months that tells me anything other than this is just a big picture uptrend because that's what it is. You know, I just sat beside someone. I was out for lunch with a bunch of men and someone said, oh, Bitcoin, I took all my losses. And I was like, took all your losses. I'm thinking, oh, my goodness. You know, this chart is going up so much. That's unfortunate that you're full of losses. And that speaks to again, probably operating on a timeframe that is that is probably inappropriate. Right. So again, let's just kind of walk through the exact same analysis that we already did using Bitcoin. So if you agree that Bitcoin is in a monthly uptrend, which this is a monthly log chart and it is, it's a, it's a higher, higher lows chart. It just made highs a few months ago. If that's true, then we want to be able to go down and look at a, a shorter timeframe. So we could say, let's say we look at a weekly timeframe and then we get a perspective, right? And then what happens is we go to the daily timeframe. But remember that we don't want to get caught up looking at this big volatility that may happen on day to day and change our mind about what's actually happening big picture. And that's what I think it's missed if we sort of are too close to the action, right? I bet or, you know, GPDC there that'll work. But if you look at a weekly chart, I think you're going to have to agree with me if we can change that again or whatever you want to do. So I mean, that's a higher low, right? Now, you may, you know, say, oh, my goodness, too big a draw down. I don't think it is, but it's a higher low than what we saw. Yeah, there you go. And so that is a higher low. We just made a higher high. That is the definition of an uptrend as far as I'm concerned. And yes, we can say there's moving averages that are negative. But here we go again. We don't want to, you know, have analysis paralysis. Sometimes I do like having nothing on a chart and just looking at price, which is how you started this topic, right? Yeah. I think this is a very important asset. And I think that it was down, you know, six and a half percent or so. I think in 2025, I down year against most assets rose, but it's been up a lot. And I think it actually just started to show some pretty good relative strength here in the last several days, making those charts improve. But again, just things we want to always remember that we want to know what that big picture looks like. So we don't get caught up with the sensationalist headlines that are designed to make us kind of, you know, jumpy. Right. Exactly. I mean, that's what gets the clicks, right? You know, anything that kind of makes you panic. And I do need to mention that I disclose that I did get a position in I bet, you know, yesterday this cross above the 50 day moving average line and treat me after it got turned away there. I also want to bring up a few stocks that you were talking about. And I'm going to start just because this kind of follows along with our international exposure. And you brought this up to me. And I'm like, why is this not on my radar at all? And the reason is because I recognize that, oh gosh, I have some boiling requirements. And this doesn't, this doesn't fit. This is a semiconductor out of Japan. So you look at the, you know, the weekly chart, this is obviously an uptrend. It's got a very strong thing. It's not like this is a tiny company out of nowhere. This is a $110 billion company. It just does most of its trading outside of the US market. And so here I am, like, what is this stock? Why haven't I seen it? And you tell me what, because again, since I'm not familiar with it, tell us what you're seeing here and why this caught your eye. Well, again, I mean, you've had a lot of strength in foreign markets. Now, of course, I think we're probably all familiar with semiconductors at this point. So, you know, we, we know the standard names. And I think it's fair to say this is not the standard name, because yeah, these five letter OTC codes, you know, which to me, you know, when I think pink sheets in the US, I don't even know if it's still called pink sheets, but, you know, I think speculative, you know, garbage, penny stocks, right? But we've got a lot of very serious large cap foreign companies listed there that are just deciding to obviously not pay, you know, New York listing fees, probably. And so, from this perspective, this is a great company with a lot of relative strength that is, is, I think it's a very legitimate name. I think the fundamentals, if you, if you, you know, cursor down, you'll see this is, it's doing the same thing that everyone else is doing in this space. They're making money. And it's in the right space. And it's also receiving new attention. And the reason is because when foreign markets, right, pick up and people start to buy that in the big, let's say, big broad Japanese ETF where they buy whatever it is, it, this is in there. And so, what ends up happening is that everything gets kind of caught up. And then the sort of the best merchandise starts to bubble up. And I'm sure more and more people, you know, they, you slowly catch on you say, wow, Japanese, you know, semiconductor company. And, and here it is. And now it's on your radar. And so I do also have volume requirements. But the reality is, is that I'm willing to sort of understand and accept that this is a large foreign company that is not trading in the US as much, but it's actually very liquid. So in the same way that I'd be willing to trade an ETF that doesn't have much liquidity because the stocks have liquidity. This is the same idea. So to me, this is a very legitimate company. It just went through a weekly pullback over the last several weeks. And yeah, full disclosure, our clients bought the, bought the pullback, if you will. Most finance teams are spending on the wrong things, expense reports, spend policy PDFs that nobody reads, a close that stretches into weeks. That's maintenance, not momentum. It's time to get Brex A F, agentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at Brex.com/AF. Since we started our conversation about biases, I want to kind of go to one of those where a lot of folks either love it or hate it, you know, Tesla. And of course, you look at the monthly chart here. And this has just had some phenomenal runs. A lot of people look at the recent weakness and say, okay, well, is it, you know, is it, is it done type thing? How do you view this? And again, all of the headlines that kind of, you know, whether it's, you know, I mean, today it was about full self-driving, going to subscription model. It was the pay package. It was the numbers, China. I mean, there's just so much that kind of does this push and pull. So how do you look at something like Tesla? Well, I mean, first off, I don't know if I ever, like, and I have to be careful obviously being extreme, but I don't know if I've ever seen a stock command such a, an incredible, you know, level of dissent and, you know, people are annoyed and people are frustrated and people are angry. And you know, there were people at last April when the, when the stock market made a low, you know, this Tesla went to, I think, two 10 or two 20. I mean, the stock is essentially doubled from there, right? From last year, it's doubled. And yet you've got people that are saying, this doesn't make any sense. They're not selling any cars. And so you have to be careful, right? I mean, this is a company that has a whole lot more going on than cars, I would argue. I mean, you got robots, this AI, I don't know if you've used Grop, but there's so much stuff going on here. And again, I think Eli is obviously a very kind of captivating kind of man at the same time. You know, I don't, I wouldn't want to be biased away from participating in a stock like Tesla because we think something about, I don't know, but think something about the CEO. We think something about their car because, you know, I have to tell you, I also full disclosure, I have full self-driving testing and driver test that I've been blown away. Full self-driving is amazing. I can't. I've been using it more than 80% of my miles. And so it's really impressive. But the point is, is that this chart, we just went to basically almost highs there, right? And now, if you look at the weekly chart, which you have on there, higher highs, higher lows, we're pulling back right now. It doesn't look violent. So we're just looking at the chart and we're ignoring maybe our biases around this company. This is a stock that has had, indeed. You've already pointed at a very, very powerful run. It's essentially been consolidating for years. And here we are on the cost of highs. And we've just pulled back. This looks like the kind of stock that's me could make a surprising run because I think it's fair to say that the sentiment is not there, right? You do not have widespread bullishness over Tesla. I mean, I think that, yeah, again, we've already, I've already said, there's lots of people that are biased from ever touching Tesla stock. - Yeah, I don't know. - No, absolutely. Yeah, it's very interesting. And I do have a Tesla myself, a Tesla Y. I don't get to drive it that much 'cause my wife takes it to work every day. I work from home. But I was actually surprised that 'cause they just recently came out with the FSD stats. And I was at 20%, you know, and my wife doesn't use it at all. Although, you know what, she started to a little bit. This last version, the 14, you know, really kind of got her a little bit more comfortable, but it's baby steps for her. So I think driving, I think driving takes more mental energy than I think most of us understand. And I do not realize until you use full self-driving and experience the, you know, what it is, it's actually, it's much more relaxing. And I think again, and driving is more of a burden than we probably give a credit for. - Yeah, anyway. - I have been stunned at like the difference, you know, 'cause when I have gone into the office, you know, and I still take over during transitions, especially downtown LA freeways. I haven't gotten my level of trust there. And it almost needs to be a different level of aggression, but I don't want Mad Max mode. But yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, so a few stocks that I also want to talk about, because we mentioned XBI, and again, I do have a position there, but HCA health care, you know, what a lot of people might consider kind of the boring, you know, boring stocks. And it's too home, why would I want something that's just not that exciting hospitals? What's your take? How do you kind of get over that bias and argue against it? - Well, for sure, and that is a bias, and I do not want that bias. So this is a stock that has outperformed the S&P 500 on a one, two, three, four, five, and 10-year time frame. So again, before we go and, you know, bias ourselves away from it, let's be open-minded. Do we want our portfolios to rise? The answer is probably yes. You know, and if you can have a stock that's rising more, you know, than the S&P 500 over the long time frame, I would argue it's interesting, right? And so from that perspective, I would also argue that health, which has been a very weak sector, has had a recent period of strength, which may or may not turn into something bigger. And in the event that it does or doesn't, HCA is a stock that's actually in an uptrend and offers that opportunity for, I think, some stability in a portfolio. So I like to use, you know, large cap stocks like this that are going up and maybe they don't have, you know, incredibly exciting fundamentals, but let's be serious. Those are double digit, you know, like, you know, grinds growth there. It's pretty solid and so 19.2 is billions, not millions. Yeah, that's, that's some big numbers, you know, absolutely. So a stock like this, just given its size and again, I happen to know it, I mean, it's got a very low volatility. Okay, so, so relative to so many stocks that, you know, so many investors follow, it's got a low volatility. And so you can, you can use these kinds of stocks to sort of anchor a portfolio and let's be serious. There's nothing wrong with anchoring your portfolio in a stock that's rising better than the market. And I think it's also fair to say that this is another good example where, you know, today, let's say, you know, the market sells off and, you know, technology, of course, maybe sells off more and there's certainly maybe the semis or even more volatile, but here's HCA and it actually holds itself, right? And so again, it allows your portfolio to essentially kind of, you know, operate in a more smooth manner. And so you do have to wrap your head around that bias that we've already talked about where maybe it's not the most exciting stock, but that's just bringing me back to, you know, where you went with Lily because, you know, in 2022, if you had asked me, do I think Lily is going to double in 2023? I would be like, I doubt it. It's just a big boring else company, but it absolutely did. And it did a lot more than that. So I think the market can always surprise us and I think if we can keep an open mind and be willing, right, to listen to what it says rather than have our own biases, I think we can operate in a manner and, you know, more flexibly adjust as conditions change on us. - Absolutely. And you know, we might as well, because you're in Canada, we might as well end with a Canadian stock. This is out of Toronto and CLS, of course, you take a look at the monthly here. And I mean, it's kind of off the chart literally. We have to actually do a best fit here to even show how powerful this move has been. So again, a lot of people would argue that, gosh, it's gotta be done and nothing to see here. But what do you think of the recent action? Very wippy and here, maybe, but tightening up lately? - Yeah, absolutely. So the very first way I would approach this is, okay, so we know we've got a technology company, you know, you've got your dual-listed opportunity. So here's a way, essentially, by the way, for an American investor to get some Canadian dollar exposure too, because essentially this is our arbitrage to the Canadian stock that it is, okay? 'Cause that's where it's bomb-self. So what we've got is a very strong uptrend that is now spending some time consolidating. And on that weekly chart that you've got up there, it doesn't look like it's any kind of erratic consolidation. At the same time, I will definitely tell you, this is a very volatile stock. And it is capable of moving five to, you know, eight, nine percent on a given day up or down. And so because we're looking at this and saying, okay, we've got a monthly uptrend, which you just did. We know we've got fundamentals. Like, I love the four quarters rising there, where we've got the number of institutions have been kind of continuing to pile into the stock like this, that is making all these parts that are being used and all this stuff, including I see it mentioned in AI, data centers. Of course, what's new, everything is. So because we've got that monthly chart-- - Error space defense. - Of course, area that's been very strong. It's everywhere, right? And we've got a weekly consolidation. To me, we want to now be looking at the daily chart and evaluating whether we can get involved in a stock like this. And again, it's erratic. So it's the kind of stock that, you know, you can't have what if you operate in a stock like this, and you walk in and you say, look, I'm gonna have a super tight five, six percent stop loss. That's not gonna work well, because the stock, that's common, right? And that would be, to me, a mistake in a stock like this, because the volatility is higher than that. And so you need to accept that. And so the way I would operate in this, I like to use, you know, relative strength index as an oscillator to sort of say, oh, now we've got to pull back within, 'cause if we can get a daily pullback here, we have an opportunity to buy a daily pullback in a weekly pullback in a monthly uptrend. And I think that puts it all together and sort of marrying time horizon. - Well, David, again, it's a fascinating conversation with you, I love having you on. I love the passion that you bring to everything. And again, the biases, it's, I think we can all be guilty of it. But rather than just throw your hands up in the air and say, well, there's nothing I can do, I think that what you kept on coming back to is just looking at the evidence, really. I mean, sometimes it just comes down to the math. Look at the numbers, you look at the comparisons and it's like, hey, whatever your biases, this is what the numbers are telling you and it's really kind of hard to argue against those. - Totally agree. It's been a pleasure, Justin. I love talking with you and yeah, great show. I appreciate the invitation. - Yeah, now and as a reminder, you can be followed on X at David Cox RJ for Raymond James. Anything else that people should know about ways to kind of follow what you're doing? - Yeah, so I mean, again, through my ex account, you can certainly track me down. But financially in sync.com is our website and we do communicate regularly. I put together a Friday webinar called Where Do We Investors Stand that is always current with all kinds of information without bias. I will talk about anything that is happening that I think is worthwhile. And it's a distribution list that does not have a cost. And so you're welcome to just send me an email and I will add you to a distribution list. But I do regularly post charts on Twitter and yeah, love to get engagement and yeah, it's fun. So thank you again, Justin. - Yeah, thanks again for being here. I really appreciate it. That's gonna wrap it up for us. This week, thank you so much for watching and please join us next week. We're gonna have Katie Stockton, another CMT back on the show. She's of course a founder and managing partner of Fairlead's strategy, so it'll be great to talk with her and get her take on what's been going on lately. So hope you join us for that. Thanks a lot for watching. We'll see you next time. Bye bye now. (upbeat music) - The world is transforming faster than ever and standing still isn't an option. At Oppenheimer, we're working at the forefront of the innovation economy to invest where progress begins. Finding opportunities that build and protect wealth for individuals and institutions that want to seat at the edge of tomorrow. Put the power of Oppenheimer thinking to work for you. 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