From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it's a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about the recent strength in Gold, even in the face of a Dollar that has yet to start falling. After Thursday and Friday's turn around, I think it's finally time for the Dollar to weaken. The way I see it, the relative strength we've seen in Gold was a heads up that the Dollar is set to fall. The correlation between Japanese Yen and Gold Miners on a relative basis is the intermarket relationship that stands out the most.

I've been a fan of Tony Dwyer's work for a long time. Those of you who know me see me approach the market from a top/down global macro and intermarket perspective. Tony starts his process in a similar way at Cannacord Genuity and Dwyerstrategy.com. When we're talking about the next direction for stocks, we both focus on other assets like credit to help identify big trends. We look at the behavior of commodity and currency markets to make decisions in equities. I thought this was a really fun conversation. I particularly enjoyed Tony's comparisons to 1995 and what was going on then with respect to the President's public issues, interest rates, precious metals and the US Dollar. This podcast could have gone on forever if we let it, but we kept it short and concise so we could get to the point quickly.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Cannabis stocks have been a bit of a disaster since late March, but let's take a look at what's happening and if there's a way to play it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Wednesday morning I outlined the charts we were watching ahead of the Fed Decision and what we would need to see before getting out of the way and reevaluating our bullish Equities and US Interest Rates thesis.

Today I want to look at those same charts and note what's changed and how we're moving forward.

We've wanted to be erring on the long side of stocks if the major Indexes are above their 2018 highs. That has been the strategy for the second half of 2019. But what if we're not above those highs? Then what?

Today we're going to look at July's monthly charts and identify the changes worth noting.

This is the video recording of the August 2019 Conference Call for Members of All Star Options

Tuesday's Mystery Chart received a lot of responses, with most of you were erring on the long side.

Now, let's look at the chart and its related theme.

Here's SBI Life Insurance Company Ltd. attempting to break out above its post-IPO base while the more traditional "banking stocks" are being hit hard. Sure the price action is a bit choppy, but it's not going down like many other stocks in the sector and market.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

The reason this chart stood out to us is that the relative strength is obvious and suggests that these stocks will lead to the upside once the market gains its footing. As long as prices are above their recent lows of 732, the bias is to the upside towards 952.

I've made no secret about it. I've been bullish on Twitter -- the business -- since I first discovered the power of the platform in 2009. To say that Twitter has profoundly changed my life for the better would be a vast understatement. Sure, the company has social, ethical, even financial challenges. But Twitter is one of those companies that if it disappeared tomorrow, it would have a huge negative effect on me. I can't say that about most businesses I interact with.

Finding opportunities to invest in the stock of Twitter -- $TWTR -- has been a bit trickier.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday's Mystery Chart is one of my favorite charts right now, so thank you all for your feedback and participation.

I received a lot of answers, but I'd say 2/3 of you were buyers and the other 1/3 were sellers.

With that as our backdrop, let's get into it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This post is a deep dive into the Social Media subsector, which was the topic of this week's Mystery Chart.

For full the full context around this post, please read that one first.

This is the question I often ask myself. In which direction is there the most risk? Are we better off looking for stocks to buy or looking for stocks to sell? There is no need to make this complicated. Where are the probabilities of success skewed in our favor?

You're well aware by now that I spend a lot of time looking through charts in the U.S. and around the world. We have Indexes, Sectors, Stocks and other assets throughout My Chartbook. One thing I learned a long time ago is to also pay attention to the bellwethers. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot, but we take it a little more seriously around here. There are only a few of them and today I want to draw your attention specifically to what is happening in shares of J.P. Morgan.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

As part of our Institutional Top 10 Charts report on February 21st, we wrote about why Litecoin was leading the Cryptocurrency regime change.

Several weeks later on April 3rd, we followed-up on that call by noting the improving price action of Bitcoin and Ethereum and suggesting a long-term bottom was likely in for the Crypto space.

Several months later, let's see where we are now.