Finance Trends Letter

Gold stocks ( GDX , NUGT ) have been firming up and moving higher in recent days.  This trend is especially evident if we pull up the chart of one of the world's leading gold miners, Franco Nevada ( FNV ). Sporting a $14.8 billion market cap, FNV is the 3rd-largest US-listed gold miner by market cap , behind $20 billion Barrick and Newmont Mining. FNV just made a new all-time high above $81.16, the prior high from August 2016. You can see these price points on the updated chart below (the stock was just below the ATH price when I shared the FNV chart on Twitter ). The stock has cleared resistance and has only "blue skies" above. So the recent strength in gold mining stocks and utilities is reminiscent of early 2016 , when these two industries were among the best-performing groups in the market. The gold miners and utilities enjoyed a strong run through the summer of 2016, then pulled back sharply into early 2017. While utility stocks ( XLU ) have already gon...

McDonald's ( MCD ) is trading near an all-time high, even as the broader market has stumbled in recent weeks. Quick chart update on McDonald's ( MCD ), a stock that was last highlighted in our "new all time highs" stock report from April 2017. At that time, MCD was hitting new highs as the Nasdaq made a record high above the 6,000 point mark.  Today, MCD is trading just below a new all-time high, even as the overall market has suffered through some late-summer gyrations/shakeouts and pullbacks. This is a sign of the stock's relative strength compared to the broader market. MCD is a stock to watch here. See the performance chart below: MCD vs. SPY , QQQ .   MCD has outperformed the S&P 500 ETF ( SPY ) and the Nasdaq 100 ETF ( QQQ ) during the August correction. The stock has moved higher from its July low, even as the indexes lost a bit of ground since late July.  MCD (+31% YTD) has also outperformed SPY (+10% YTD), of which it is a com...