How Does The Primary Trend Work? JC Parets’ Chart-Driven Strategy Explained

Market leadership rarely changes with a clear announcement. 

Strong sectors often begin separating from the pack while headlines still focus on yesterday’s winners, which makes early shifts easy to miss.

JC Parets built The Primary Trend to track those changes through price, relative strength, momentum, and sector rotation. 

In this guide, I’ll explain how The Primary Trend works, how the NOW Score fits into the process, and how Parets uses charts to choose entries, manage risk, and decide when a trend has run its course.

The Core Idea Behind The Primary Trend

For Parets, price is the clearest record of what the market is doing.

Economic forecasts and company stories can sound persuasive, but price reveals whether buyers are committing capital. 

When demand keeps overcoming supply, a trend can continue long after the original catalyst has faded from the news.

The “primary trend” is the dominant direction behind those daily moves. 

Parets maintains a longer focus and does not abandon a position because of one weak session or a routine pullback. 

Instead, he looks for a broader change in trend, momentum, or relative performance before changing course.

It’s a patient strategy that helps Parets identify where strength already exists and determine whether it still deserves capital.

Starting With the Broad Market

Parets begins with the full market rather than jumping straight into a stock ticker.

His weekly research spans global equities, bonds, interest rates, currencies, commodities, precious metals, and cryptocurrencies. 

That wide view can reveal capital shifts that remain hidden when someone watches only the major U.S. indexes.

Starting from the top helps Parets avoid selecting a strong-looking chart inside a weak environment.

The process then moves through countries, indexes, sectors, industries, and individual securities. 

Each stage narrows the field until only a smaller group of ideas remains.

Reading the Four Stages of a Market Shift

Parets organizes major leadership changes into four phases.

The Quiet Before the Storm begins when money starts rotating beneath the surface. 

Most people still focus on the previous winners, but stronger groups quietly begin to separate.

The Great Split arrives when those emerging leaders pull further away from weaker parts of the market. 

This stage reveals how the trend has gained support without attracting full public attention.

During the Awakening, institutions, analysts, and financial media begin recognizing the shift. 

The final Stampede phase comes when capital floods into the theme and prices can move almost vertically.

This cycle framework helps Parets judge more than whether a sector looks bullish, giving him a way to estimate how mature the move may be and whether the stronger part of the opportunity could still lie ahead.

How Sector Rotation Narrows the Field

Capital does not remain in the same sectors forever.

Technology can dominate one cycle, while energy, mining, industrials, financials, or healthcare lead the next. 

Parets watches these transitions by comparing each group with the broader market.

Once a stronger sector unveils itself, Parets studies the industries and companies showing the best price action within it.

This layered process raises the quality of each setup. 

A stock receives a stronger backdrop when its sector is gaining ground, its industry is outperforming, and its own chart confirms the same demand.

Why Relative Strength Matters

A rising stock is not always a market leader.

Suppose two companies each gain 10%. The first advances while its industry falls. The second rises 10% while its group gains 25%. 

The first company is showing greater relative strength because it is outperforming a difficult backdrop.

Parets uses that comparison to locate areas receiving the strongest market preference. 

A stock may look healthy on its own chart, yet weak performance against its peers can show that better opportunities exist elsewhere.

Relative strength can also expose early leadership. 

When a company keeps outperforming before it becomes widely discussed, larger buyers may already be building positions.

How Momentum Confirms Demand

Momentum measures the force behind a price move.

A healthy trend should continue making progress rather than drifting higher on weak demand. 

Improving momentum suggests buyers remain active. Fading momentum can warn that a former leader is beginning to lose energy.

Parets does not use momentum as permission to chase every sharp rally. It works beside trend direction, relative strength, and a sensible entry level.

Looking at all these factors is important, since stocks can remain strong longer than many people expect. 

Selling only because a price has already climbed can mean leaving a durable move too early.

Momentum can still reverse, so Parets never relies on it alone. 

When trend, strength, and momentum support the same conclusion, the opportunity earns a higher NOW Score.

The NOW Score Explained

The NOW Score condenses this entire strategy into a ranking from 0 to 100, measuring three core areas: trend, relative strength, and momentum. 

Higher scores suggest that several technical signals support the opportunity, while lower readings can reveal weak direction, poor comparative performance, or fading demand.

Parets applies the system across roughly 5,000 charts each week, but even a perfect score does not guarantee a profit. 

Still, it does mean that the company currently stands out among the model’s strongest technical conditions. 

How the Strategy Identifies Weakness

The same scoring process also helps Parets find deteriorating stocks.

Ten companies appear in his Burn File because their charts rank near the bottom of the NOW Score. 

Weak trends, poor relative strength, and fading momentum place them on the defensive side of the system.

That contrast gives the framework more value. 

Finding a potential leader matters, but recognizing when an existing holding has begun to weaken can protect capital as well.

A low score does not mean a stock is destined for collapse, but it does signal that the technical evidence no longer supports the same confidence.

Adding Real-World Context to the Charts

Parets does not rely on price action without considering the larger environment.

Big developments themselves don’t create an automatic buy signal.

They become more useful when commodity prices, sector performance, and individual company charts strengthen together.

This plays out in a recent resource theme where sovereign funds committed billions of dollars to copper and nickel while the Pentagon supported domestic rare-earth capacity through the Defense Production Act.

Buenaventura Mining shows how those pieces can align, as the business carries exposure to gold and copper through assets such as Cerro Verde, El Brocal, and San Gabriel. 

Its shares previously climbed from roughly $5 to above $50 during an earlier resource cycle.

This isn’t just a historical move, requiring a favorable trend, momentum, relative strength, and price structure.

Choosing an Entry Without Chasing

A strong chart does not make every price attractive.

Parets looks for an entry where the possible upside compares well with the amount at risk. 

That may come through a breakout, a pullback toward support, or another technical level that creates a clear decision point.

Buy-up-to prices help members avoid chasing a recommendation after it moves beyond the original setup. 

Once the stock runs too far, the remaining upside may no longer justify the downside.

A defined entry also makes the idea easier to evaluate. You’ll know where the setup becomes attractive and when patience may make more sense.

That is more useful than receiving a ticker without timing guidance. 

The company may still have a promising story, but the chart determines whether the current price creates a favorable opportunity.

Risk Levels and Sell Discipline

Parets assumes that some recommendations will fail.

Momentum can reverse, a breakout can collapse, or capital can rotate toward another sector. 

Defined risk levels and sell instructions help him respond when evidence changes.

This is one of the strongest parts of the strategy. Many services explain why to buy in great detail, then offer little direction once the position weakens.

Parets uses the chart as both an opportunity signal and a failure test. 

His February 2020 move away from technology and toward bonds shows how that logic can work across asset classes. 

The Nasdaq then fell about 22% in one month, while bonds gained by double digits.

Risk rules will not create perfect exits. They can help stop a manageable loss from becoming a lasting portfolio problem.

Is The Primary Trend Strategy Worth Following?

In my opinion, the strategy makes a lot of sense if you want a connected technical process rather than isolated stock ideas.

JC Parets combines broad market analysis, cycle phases, sector rotation, relative strength, momentum, the NOW Score, entry timing, and risk control. 

Each layer removes weaker choices until a smaller group of stronger setups remains.

The biggest advantage is clarity. 

Members can understand why an opportunity qualifies, where the preferred entry sits, and what would invalidate the original thesis.

Technical signals will still fail, and this method will not suit someone looking only for fundamental analysis or permanent buy-and-hold positions. 

It fits better with readers willing to follow changing leadership and respond when the chart weakens.

For that audience, The Primary Trend offers a practical way to use Parets’ chart-driven strategy without sorting through 5,000 securities every week.