Good Tuesday afternoon folks (or good Wednesday morning, for some of you). How about this market, huh? Against the odds, stocks logged another gain on Tuesday. Most of the major indices are once again within sight of a record high. You gotta hand it to the bulls... they're not backing down. We still have our doubts about this effort developing any follow-through, but the trend is your friend until proven otherwise. We'll take a detailed look at it below, as always. The first thing we want to do is show you some news from one of our featured stocks you may have missed. Long story made short, Nexus Gold (NXXGF, NXS) is buying rights to mine the Niangouela gold concession in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Now, this may ring a bell for some of you. This is the prospect the company announced it had signed a letter of intent to acquire back on November 23rd, when we first introduced NXXGF to you. Nothing's changed, really, other than the fact that the actual purchase agreement was signed rather than just the intent being disclosed. We were pretty much counting on a deal getting done anyway, but now it's official. Regardless, NXXGF (or NXS for any Canadians) was and still is one of the market's best-looking junior gold mining ideas. Part of that bullishness lies in the fact that gold still looks poised for a rebound rally. Gold miners -- and junior miners in particular -- are highly levered to gold prices, so if gold goes up just a little, Nexus Gold shares are apt to go up a lot. While we still think gold's got a lot more upside than downside here with the U.S. dollar finally starting to crumble under the weight of its recent gain, that's not the only reason we're fans at this time. Although a lot of pundits tend to talk about gold's "fundamentals" quite a bit, the fact of the matter is, the most important piece of fundamental data for gold doesn't exist... supply and demand. That is, how much is there, and how much are people actually buying? There's an overlooked way to gauge the supply/demand dynamic, however - Bullion Vault's Gold Investor Index, which isn't a measure of price, but a measure of how much gold is actually trading hands among the traders the group keeps tabs on. And as of last month, there was a huge surge in demand on just the modest pullback in gold prices. In fact, if you look closely, the Gold Investor Index (of real demand) has been rising since May - albeit erratically -- with or without gold prices' help. It's frustrating simply because this demand hasn't made a bullish dent in prices yet. It's also worth noting that the World Gold Council's measurement of supply and demand for Q3, ending in September, does NOT show heightened demand, except in one area... as an investment, where it means the most in terms of driving the price of gold. Q3-2016's demand for gold as an investment was up 44%. Source: World Gold Council We can't stress enough how the surge in demand for gold as an investment is very telling. We also can't stress enough that the World Gold Council' snapshot is now two months old, whereas Bullion Vault's is less than a week old. It's entirely possible the demand was brewing up for all of Q3, and was finally unleashed in a big way last month (though it was pretty darn strong in October as well). With the U.S. dollar still poised for a dip on top of the real increase in demand for gold, we continue to like gold's foreseeable future. We especially like Nexus Gold as a way to step into that trend; the company's already confirmed it's in high-growth mode. The kicker is the futuristic gold-finding technology it uses. In any case, I'll confess this next nugget of analysis we're about to give you is one I'm sharing only with a great deal of hesitation. Not only is it a bit complicated, the future for these stocks is completely unclear in light of the fact that (1) Obamacare is probably on the way out, and (2) we have no idea what's going to replace it. This is a can of worms we've already opened up in the past though, so we feel a little bit obligated to follow-up on the matter. We're talking about healthcare stocks, of course, which have been habitually strong performers since 2012 thanks to the buzz of the Affordable Care Act's presumed impact, but profit-wise have been perpetual disappointments. It looked like the reality of tepid earnings was finally starting to set in around early 2015, when the market-beating rally from healthcare stocks stalled. Then, it looked like reality was starting to sink in this year, when healthcare stocks lost their lead to other sectors, and have been falling since August. Take a look. [Each sector's performance is color-coded to its label, but if you can't see all colors, the labels from top to bottom are in order of results, from best to worst, since mid-2013.] We have to assume the recent weakness was driven by the realization that the ACA isn't a boon for the entire industry. Here's a look as the S&P 500 Healthcare Sector Index's chart. More important, it includes the sector's trailing and projected earnings, and corresponding P/E ratio. The arrows mark Q3's numbers. What the chart doesn't show is how many times since... oh, late-2014 or so that the healthcare sector came up well short of earnings estimates, always calling into question its optimistic earnings outlooks. The irony is that it finally looked like the group might start living up to expectations, following Q3's strong results. Better yet, the group is now trading at a palatable trailing P/E of 19.5 and a forward-looking P/E of 14.45. That's buy-worthy, even if the outlooks are a tad aggressive. And then Trump got elected. That will change everything, probably for the better in terms of earnings. All of a sudden the steep growth estimates may be right, even if for the wrong reason. Or, maybe they won't. It largely depends on how fast Congress moves to repeal Obamacare, and what Trump's team intends to replace it with. Until we know what the future looks like though, I think we have to assume the earnings outlooks are almost as overly-optimistic as they have been in the past. What's interesting - AND I THINK VERY NOTEWORTHY - is that while the healthcare sector as a whole is in a slump, not every industry in the healthcare sector is losing ground. Check out the chart below, which is the reason we brought the whole thing up today... we wanted to show you how each group within the healthcare sector was doing now. We just had to paint the bigger picture first. This chart compares the performance of each industry in the healthcare sector since 2013. Healthcare plan providers have slowly but surely taken the lead, while most everything else has deteriorated despite bullish expectations. The chart itself raises one key question - do we trust what the market is telling us via stock prices, or do we think the market as a whole is flat out wrong to be selling most healthcare stocks? I'm usually a "take the hints as face value" kind of guy, but in this case, this doubt seems overdone. I will say, however, I completely agree with investors' decision to be buyers of healthcare plan providers here. It doesn't show on the chart, but that's the group with the lowest P/E within the sector right now, and it's earnings growth outlook is one of the better ones in the sector. Earnings are supposed to grow 37% next year. We just wanted to show you all these charts to get you thinking about some things, and illustrate what was going on, bigger-picture-wise. Sometimes it takes this kind of visual comparison to notice the important facts that don't readily stand out. I'd also like to thank James Brumley over at the Under the Radar Movers newsletter for putting these charts together for us.... again. I'll also go ahead and let you know right now that while we looked at them, he's got some specific trading plans for them, aiming to capitalize on one of the mistakes the market recently made with the healthcare sector. I can't say anymore than that, other than to add he had a great point, and is going to turn it into a great opportunity once the rest of the planets line up. The bulk of his thesis is based on all the charts you see above. As for the market, hey - we're almost back to record-breaking highs. Frankly, we can't say it's merited, but we also know we can't fight the tape. If the bulls want to stage a rally here, they WILL stage a rally. Don't stand in their way. On the other hand, you may now want to get too used to the idea either. This rally effort is still lacking volume, and the VIX is back to unusually low levels. This is often when the bears and profit-takers start to assemble their mob.