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?

This week on the podcast I'm thrilled to have Quint Tatro join me as our guest. I've been following his work for a long time and have always appreciated his technical approach to managing portfolios at his advisory firm Joule Financial. This was a great conversation where Quint walks us through how he got to Technical Analysis in the first place and how he applies those methods on a daily basis. We went over the overall stock market and how he wants to overweight International Stocks and Emerging markets heading into 2020. He also likes Gold bigger picture here and the mining stocks that come a long with it. I really enjoyed this one. Give it a listen!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This is a quick follow-up to our last two posts on Canada (September 16 & December 10), updating our views and adding any new trade ideas for today's environment.

In this special episode of The Money Game, Phil asks me about any new trends I’m seeing for 2020. I give him both the sexy answer, that everyone seems to want to hear, and the real answer. I think this was a quick but valuable conversation about US and foreign markets, US Sectors like Technology and Financials and even what we see coming for Bitcoin. We had good timing on this conversation as we’re just getting starting the new year.

Welcome to 2020, where vision will not be in hindsight -- except when using past trends to inform decisions on future price action.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited to kick off a year that is likely to see lots of volatility. Volatility is a traders best friend, when harnessed to our advantage. Sure, investors don't like volatility. But active traders thrive in it. And that's what we are here.

After that setup, I'm going to let you down with my first trade of the year being one to capture what we feel is some sideways action setting up in the metals space. LOL 

Every quarter we put out a Quarterly Playbook for our Premium Members, with our three-part Q1 2020 note being published just now.

In this note, we want to outline one of the most informative charts from each of the three parts.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.

The US Stock Market Indexes are all hitting new highs. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who reads the work we put out.

Isn't it nice when we just let the data dictate our actions?

Good music and clean charts. It works.

So today we're going to focus on a new sector that I think is just getting started: Industrials. Take a look at the fresh breakout from its 2018-2019 consolidation:

Click on charts to zoom in

See how this one is resolving? Consolidations tend to resolve themselves in the direction of the underlying trend. This one here is apparently no different.

Let's go back to 2014-2016 and play my favorite game: "Not a Head & Shoulders Top". These are incredibly rare patterns simply for the fact that markets trend and the likelihood for a trend to continue in its current direction is much greater than for it to just completely reverse. This is common sense for those of us who have done the homework. But because they gave this "pattern" a funny name that is easy to remember, people think they're...

As January gets under way, it’s time to review positions with January options that remain open (haven’t already hit profit targets or been stopped out).

Most trades I put on for All Star Options tend to have a minimum duration of 30 days (short premium plays) and often as long as 6-8 months (for long premium plays). As options approach expiration, greeks like theta and gamma start to become my enemy and whipsaw my P/L. Therefore, as options and spreads get into the expiration month, my best practice is to put each position on notice — it’s time to take action.

This is the video recording and slides from the All Star Options Monthly Conference Call: December 30, 2020.

Do you want to know my cheat code?

It's the Monthly Candlesticks.

I'm telling you. That's my secret. And it's been starring at us right in the face at the end of every single month.

It takes me about half an hour to go through my Monthly Charts. When you add that up over 12 months, it's only 6 hours of work. There is no 6 hours the rest of the entire year that even comes close to the value I get from this monthly exercise.

Is this not a breakout from a 21 month base?