This is the recording from the live July Conference Call for Members of the New Allstarcharts India! Before getting into individual stock ideas in India, we're going to first start with the global macro perspective. Once we identify the direction of the underlying trends from a structural and broader view, then we'll dive into the NIFTY and SENSEX Indexes on both longer-term and short-term timeframe. We want to look at Large-caps, Small-caps and everything in between before getting into the Sector and Industries themselves like Energy, Banks and Pharma.

This is when we finally break things down to the individual stock scenario with identified risk vs reward opportunities. That is what this is all about - aligning ourselves in the direction of the underlying trend while at the same time identifying where the risk is to make sure the potential reward is skewed exponentially in our favor. You will find that throughout this process we discuss Momentum, Fibonacci and Relative Strength. I encourage you to check out the Education Section so you know exactly where I'm...

One of the most underrated tools we have as U.S. Stock Market participants is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I often hear how because it's price weighted, or because it only has 30 stocks, it cannot be relied upon as a gauge of market health. In the past, I've written about how I use it and why these criticisms are irresponsible. I encourage you to read through our Free Educational section to see how we use the Dow Jones Industrial Average and other various tools that we have at our disposal.

One of the things I try and point out is that the S&P500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average move together. Look at a chart of both of them going back 10 years or 100 years and tell me they move in different directions. The S&P500 is market-cap weighted, meaning that the bigger the stock's market cap, the heavier the weighting in the index....

We're in the middle of a bunch of really exciting things here at All Star Charts. We're growing as a team and as a community of investors. This summer we brought on our new Chief Options Strategist Sean McLaughlin and added new Technical Analyst Tom Bruni. With this growth comes a lot more data that and analytics that we get to dive into every day. Some of the stuff we're building is so cool and beyond anything I thought was possible 10 years ago. We're living in some pretty amazing times and I'm really enjoying using and exploring the new technology.

Earlier this year I was approached by Investor's Business Daily, who is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. When I was 21-22 years old and first getting into markets, this was the newspaper I was reading every day on the bus from Hoboken, NJ into New York City and...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Cryptocurrencies have enjoyed a nice few days after a long rout, meaning my timeline is now filled with Bitcoin charts and the like. To be honest I've been so busy with charts for Allstarcharts India that I hadn't checked my crypto charts in a while. Well, I'm glad I did because the chart of Ethereum is a textbook example of a core Technical Analysis concept, polarity.

I have a Google Home at my house and we ask it questions all the time. I asked: "Hey Google, do we really need to call google Alphabet?" and she responded: "Sorry, I don't understand the question."

Yeah, me neither.

In case you've been living under a rock, Google $GOOG printed a new all-time high today (Tuesday) and continues to ignore headlines like a good soldier. And with earnings on deck, scaredy-cat options market makers are bidding up prices in options ahead of July 23rd's release. This sets up a nice trade for us.

The relative weakness of the Nifty Free Float Smallcap 100 has been a theme all throughout 2018, so with today's chart of the week I want to take a look at what that potentially means for the broader market.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This past Wednesday, the founder of Sierra Alpha Research, David Keller, CMT presented to the New York Chapter meeting of the CMT Association on the topic of timeframes. He spoke about how he defines and uses three frequently referenced timeframes: short, medium, and long-term, as well as the common pitfalls he's seen people fall into over the course of his nearly 20 years as a Technical Analysis practitioner.

You see what I did there? The title of this post is a play on the stock we're about to put an options play on -- Workday $WDAY. You're welcome. I'll be here all week. Tip your bartender.

It's summer time. Sometimes during dull market action we have to keep ourselves entertained right?

Well, nothing entertains me more than profitable options trades. And with earnings on the not-to-distant horizon in $WDAY, I see a scenario setting up that can get us paid for our work.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Market Breadth has been a hot topic as of late, which is why we've talked about it here, here, here, and here over the last month. Last week we discussed market breadth from a global perspective by measuring the trends and momentum readings of stock markets from all around the world, as well as the US sectors and sub-sectors. Today we're going to expand on that by looking at the internals specific to the US stock market. I will warn you in advance that this is a bit of a long post, but I don't want to give the bears a chance to say that we're relying too heavily on one or two charts to support our conclusion.

This past week I came across a potential trade setup in an Indian micro-cap stock that really got me thinking about the question, "Who am I as a market participant?". With all the noise created on a daily basis, it's easy to lose sight of your answer to this simple question, but doing so inhibits your ability to make any decision about markets responsibly.

Before we start again with Season 2 of the Allstarcharts Interviews, I wanted to introduce you to our new Chief Options Strategist at Allstarcharts.com - options wizard Sean McLaughlin! Many of you already know him as @chicagosean. When it comes to the Greeks, this is the guy you want on your side, so we're lucky to have him. In this podcast episode, Sean and I talk about Trading, Social Media, Taking Vacations, Books to Read and of course, Options! This was a fun conversation to have and I think there are a lot of pieces of value to take away from this one.

You have two options as an investor: you could listen to the media or you could listen to the market. They've been pushing the notion lately that only a handful of Tech stocks are leading the way for the market, suggesting a weakening breadth environment. In the real world, however, we are participating in a united rally among Tech stocks as a group.

In fact, the Equally-Weighted Technology Index went out just 0.4% away from another all-time weekly closing high, just shy of it's record high set last month. This is the Equally-Weighted Index, not the Cap-weighted index that the bears are suggesting is pointing to weakening breadth because the big names are such a large portion. If it was true that only a handful of names are going up and market breadth is deteriorating, the Equally-weighted index, which takes the extra-large market capitalization stocks completely out of the equation, would not be behaving this way.

I love getting questions from our subscribers to All Star Options. It shows they are engaged and eager to learn or to get clarification as they learn our processes. We get questions every day. Here's one I received recently that I thought held a lesson we could all benefit from:

We are in the tricky part of the quarterly cycle where upcoming earnings warrant caution on options trades in individual names. Premiums get elevated ahead of the uncertainty heading into each earnings event, so that makes being long premium an undesirable idea. Meanwhile, it makes me uncomfortable getting short elevated premiums into these events because of the risk of an outsized move blowing through any short strikes I may have on.

And of course and ironically, with summer in full swing, broader indexes are seeing declining volatilities which makes it tougher to put on good credit spreads.

But your boy hasn't given up looking for opportunities, and I see a good one shaping up in the Utilities space.

The Nasdaq 100 just hit another all-time high, as did the amount of people quoting the percentage of the index's gains that are from its top five components. While that makes for a good headline and soundbite, it's not really all that actionable. What is actionable is the chart below, which we spoke about in early June.

There are 51 stocks down since the Nasdaq 100's initial peak on January 26th, meaning there is opportunity on both sides of the tape if you're so inclined. What it also tells us is that it doesn't pay to get ideological about how large components like Apple, Amazon, and Google have become. It's a cap-weighted index, which means that as long as the leaders keep leading the index is going to move higher. When their performance deteriorates, as will the index's; it works on the way up, and the way down. It's just math.

Click Sheet To Zoom In

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It's been quite a few years since I did these youtube videos, but with the help of technology and a solid team, this is something we can start doing again on a regular basis.

Here is the first video with a throwback to the old days and then we get into Consumer Discretionary stocks and why I think they will continue to be a leading indicator for the overall market. 

Large-caps in India have been on a tear relative to their small and mid-cap counterparts, which we've spoken about at length over the last few months. With that said, it's no surprise to see that the Nifty 50 is leading to the upside once again by clearing its recent range on an absolute basis and making new 5-month closing highs.

This is the video recording of the July 2018 Conference Call for Members of All Star Options

Perhaps it's the overwhelming number of afflicted Bears coming in to emergency rooms, pharmacies (for pain meds), and therapists couches across America that is fueling the continued bull market in healthcare stocks? Interesting thought.

But we're not fundamentalists here, we just follow price action, volume, and with our options trades -- volatility. And those three things are pointing to a great opportunity for profits in the $XLV Healthcare ETF.

Some people look at Utility stocks doing well as something negative. I never understood that. They suggest that an uptrend in a sector that is looked upon as "defensive" is not something characteristic of a stock market that is going up. But, in fact, it is. With Utilities pressing against all-time highs again, now is as good of a time as any to remind ourselves that they indeed move with the overall stock market over time.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In 2018 the trend of small-cap Healthcare out-performance over its large-cap counterparts accelerated aggressively, with the small-cap ETF $PSCH returning 30.50% YTD and the large-cap ETF $XLV up a meager 1.70%.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Despite XLV's under-performance relative to small-caps and the broader market, some signs of improvement have been developing over the last few weeks. As we can see in the ratio of $XLV / $SPY below, prices retested their 2017 lows as momentum diverged positively. This suggests at the very least we don't want to be short on a relative basis.

On an absolute basis $XLV made nearly 4-month highs last week and is attempting a breakout after 6 months of consolidation. A close above 86.60 would suggest prices are heading to our next upside price target of 101.30. We also want to see momentum get back into overbought...

Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Square $SQ and a little-known company named Twitter $TWTR, is having a pretty good year. How good? Well, in the last 365 days, $SQ is up 177% and Twitter is up a more modest 158%. Boy, the sentiment in these two names sure has changed. It seemed like just yesterday Jack Dorsey was America's most hated CEO. "Pick one!" the masses screamed. Everyone thought he had taken on too big of a workload as the stocks of both companies languished in prolonged downtrends. Amazing what twin upward trending stock prices can do for Public Relations.

While both stocks look compelling here, we're going to take advantage of some attractive volatility being priced into $SQ options and an earnings event to play both sides against.

For months we've been focusing our long efforts on stocks in sectors like Fast Moving Consumer Goods that have been showing relative strength. Today we're revisiting the Consumer Goods sector as it makes new all-time highs on an absolute basis and nearly 1-year highs relative to the Nifty 500 to see what names we want to be involved in to capitalize on this theme.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Here is a look at the Nifty Fast Moving Consumer Goods Index on an absolute basis, showing prices marching toward our price target of 30,710 after two months of consolidation.

Here is a list of Consumer Goods stocks we want to be buying. You'll notice that many of them have been discussed in our posts before, but are listed here because they continue to show relative strength and well-defined reward/risk opportunities.

I just got back from a vacation in the south of France and northern Italy. I've written in the past about the benefits of getting away and the positive impact it can have on decision making and portfolio returns. If you have the discipline to stay away from your computer during a staycation, that works too. I personally cannot help myself but to go check out some charts if I know I have access to the computer. So I need to get out of town. This year we chose Europe.

Ever since first studying Fibonacci in 2005, I knew his statue was somewhere in Pisa. The trouble was finding it. There isn't much information out there. Some of you have been asking me about this for your upcoming trip to Italy or just keeping note of it for the future. So I figured it would help to just lay it out there as a reference for when you need it.

Also See: Fibonacci In Trading