Founder’s Note: Grant Hawkridge knows how to pay attention to what’s important.
Grant’s always looking for ways to get better. And he does a great job finding them, for himself and for us.
Here’s Grant with more productive introspection… – JC
By Grant Hawkridge
G’day, Grant here again.
Last week I was standing in the gym at my golf club trying to balance on one leg with my eyes closed while someone timed me.
It didn’t go particularly well.
Apparently elite golfers can hold that position for more than 16 seconds. I made it somewhere between five and six.
The reason I was doing that is that I recently signed up for a Titleist Performance Institute assessment at the club. I’d heard a few other golfers talk about it and decided it would be interesting to see what it revealed about my own swing.
The goal of the session is simple: to measure how your body actually moves during the golf swing.
Going in, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what my limitations were.
The assessment quickly tests that theory.
Some of the results lined up with what I expected.
Others were… less encouraging.
My pelvic rotation test failed, which means my lower body doesn’t rotate independently from my upper body very well. Even the simple toe-touch test didn’t go particularly well.
In other words, a few parts of the body need some work.
The point of the session isn’t to judge you. It’s to measure what’s actually happening so you can focus on the areas that matter.
Instead of relying on feel, you get objective data showing where the real limitations are.
And the more I went through the process, the more it reminded me of how I think about markets.
Markets Need Measurement Too
That experience is a good reminder of something that applies directly to markets.
Most investors approach the market the same way golfers approach their swing.
They rely on feel.
But without objective measurement, it becomes very easy to misread what is actually happening.
That’s why I spend so much time building market indicators and tracking data.
Just like the TPI assessment measures how the body actually moves during the swing, market indicators measure how money is actually moving through the market.
Instead of asking what the market should do next, we can measure what it is actually doing right now.
And when I step back and run that same type of assessment across markets today, one area stands out immediately.
Running the Market Through Its Own Assessment
One of the simplest ways to measure the market’s health is to look at how each sector is trending across multiple timeframes.
Just like the TPI assessment breaks the body down into individual movement tests, we can break the market down into its major sectors and evaluate how each one is behaving.
The table below shows how each sector is trending relative to its key moving averages:
The short-term tracks the 21-day moving average, the intermediate reflects the 63-day moving average, and the long-term tracks the 252-day moving average.
A green check means price is above the trend measure, while a red cross means it’s fallen below it.
Right now, most sectors are under pressure. Many sectors are trading below their short- and intermediate-term trends as the market works through its recent pullback.
That tells us the cooling in the index hasn’t been isolated to one corner of the market. Weakness has been fairly broad across sectors.
But one group clearly stands apart.
Energy is the only sector currently trading above all three of its key trend measures.
While much of the market is consolidating, energy continues to press higher.
And the strength is not subtle:
There are plenty of headlines trying to explain the move right now, from geopolitical tensions to energy supply concerns.
But the chart tells the story clearly enough.
Energy has now pushed to fresh all-time highs while much of the market is still working through its pullback.
More importantly, the move has come with persistence. The sector has just recorded 14 consecutive weekly gains.
This is its longest winning streak on record.
When a sector continues to grind higher week after week while the broader market pauses, it usually tells you something important about where money is flowing.
Right now, that flow is showing up in energy.
What the Assessment Shows
Going through the TPI assessment reinforced something simple. What we think is happening is not always what is actually happening.
Golfers rely heavily on feel, but feel and reality don’t always line up. What feels like a full turn might be limited rotation.
Without measurement, it’s easy to spend time working on the wrong problem.
Markets behave the same way. Headlines, narratives, and short-term price moves create strong impressions about the environment we are trading in.
But those impressions aren’t always accurate.
That’s why measurement matters. It allows us to step back and see what the market is actually doing rather than what the headlines suggest it should be doing.
Right now the evidence is fairly clear. Many sectors are working through a short-term pullback, but one group continues to press higher and even set records in the process.
Just like in the TPI assessment, the goal is not to guess what might be happening. The goal is to measure what actually is.
The edge does not come from having the strongest opinion. It comes from paying attention to the evidence.
Markets, like golf swings, reveal the truth when you stop guessing and start measuring.
That’s exactly how we approach the market in The Primary Trend, where we track major themes through our NOW Score system.
Right now the message is clear. Energy continues to lead while most sectors pause.
So that’s where we’ve been putting some capital to work.
Happy hitting🏌️⛳
Grant Hawkridge
Quantitative Analyst, TrendLabs