Jon Najarian has been trading options since the early 80s when he first entered the Chicago pits. I've always had an appreciation for the way Jon looks at the behavior of market participants through the options market, particularly the largest institutional players. By monitoring the volume size of these trades, he pays close attention to what the biggest participants are doing, often times trading alongside the "smart money". I think his perspective on this specific area of the market adds a ton of value to our conversations about Technical Analysis. In this episode, we discuss the new higher volatility regime in U.S. Stocks, what to expect moving forward and a few areas in the market where Jon is seeing unusual options activity. Since we're lucky enough to have "Dr J" on the podcast, we had to ask him about the Chicago Bears, what...

When I get asked about what I think the most important technical indicators are, I have to start with price. This is where it all begins and ends. Everything else is just a derivative of price. Let's not forget that. We can use all sorts of other things to help supplement that price analysis, but only if we understand that is all they are, supplements.

After price, for me it's momentum and relative strength that we're looking for. We want to be in stocks outperforming other stocks and showing positive momentum. Why mess around with stocks showing weakness and not showing bullish momentum? That makes little sense. Today we are going to focus on the areas showing the most relative strength and momentum, how to profit from it, and what that means for the overall market.

It's funny, some friends of mine a few weeks ago were asking me about Island Reversals. Apparently they were arguing about whether a breakout in some stock was sparked by an island reversal or not. I came to the conclusion that they were both wrong, but I appreciated their interest in this rare pattern. The point I tried to make to them was that it wasn't so much about what it's called, but more about its implications. And they had the implications right, which is all that mattered.

I don't see too many of these things, but this week we got a classic example of the ever so elusive "Island Reversal".

Here at Allstarcharts, none of us know what is going to happen in the market next week or next month or even next year. But the good news is that no one else does either. So it's an even playing field among all of us, whether you're Warren Buffett, Joey Home Gamer or anything in between. All we can do is take the data as it comes in, consistently reevaluate, and position ourselves in the direction with the highest probabilities.

Today we are taking a look at just the U.S. Stock Market Indexes to see where the risk lies and what we want to see to position ourselves aggressively on the long side. 

When assets are in strong uptrends, they're not just going up in value on an absolute basis, they also outperform their alternatives. Two obvious alternatives to investing your money in Gold are Stocks and Bonds. With the price of Gold flirting with new multi-year highs, we want to see how it's behaving vs the other asset classes. 

It's hard to ignore the strength we're seeing in some of these emerging markets. When stocks are selling off, I like to look around and see who is still holding up well. We call that "relative strength". Every day I get to speak with traders at the largest financial institutions in the world. They laugh because when everyone is selling, they get to sit there pressing buy buttons and fill their humongous orders that need to get done while they are accumulating a position.

Remember that institutions who manage $10, $20 - $50 Billion have to buy millions of shares of a stock just to have a small position relative to the overall size of their giant portfolios. It takes time to fill an order: days, weeks or even months. Retail investors can just press one button and get an entire fill whenever they want. Since institutions can't, we get to see it happening if we look close enough. When stocks are selling off, those still staying green and holding up is evidence of buy side accumulation.

Today I want to talk about some of the emerging markets out there where we're seeing relative strength. It's impossible for me as responsible market participant to ignore what is...

Jay Woods has been a designated market maker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for over 25 years. This being Technical Analysis Radio, I think it's important to understand what goes on down there and how it's changed over time. In this episode Jay shares old war stories from one of the most important and symbolic buildings in America. This conversation is the perfect compliment to some of the other perspectives we've heard throughout season one of the podcast. Jay Woods is a Chartered Market Technician who focuses on price behavior and sentiment. We discuss the current U.S. Stock Market environment including sector rotation, particularly in Financials and Technology. With volatility coming back in 2018, I think this is a great time to hear from Jay and find out what he's seeing from the floor of the NYSE.

Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts India Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the India Share Market. We take a look at all of the NSE Indexes and Sectors as well as some of our own custom indexes. At Allstarcharts we have become known around the world for the top/down approach to stocks. After we analyze each of the indexes and sectors and have identified where the strength and weakness lies, then we break it down to individual stock opportunities. By having momentum, relative strength and market trend in our favor, the probabilities of success increase dramatically.

We've been bullish towards Indian and Global Stocks as they remain in strong uptrends on any sort of intermediate-term time horizon. I still think this is an environment where we need to be buying weakness in stocks, not selling strength. The weight of the evidence is still pointing to an increased amount of risk appetite, not risk aversion. We will go over a multi-timeframe approach on this conference call where we will start with the longer-term and then work our way down...

Jeff Hirsch is the Editor of the annual Stock Traders Almanac, an inside look at the seasonal tendencies of the stock market. As Technicians we study the behavior of the market and market participants. By analyzing how our human activities change throughout the year, as well as various other cycles, we can see the impact it has on the stock market. Yale Hirsch, Jeff's father, first started publishing the almanac in the late 1960s. In this podcast episode, Jeff tells us what it was like growing up studying charts and seasonality. He then walks us through some of the most important seasonal cycles, and what some of the implications are when markets ignore seasonal tendencies. In this podcast series we like to focus on the current market environment and this episode is no different. The Almanac Trader and I discuss the current Midterm Election year and how January got us started. There are several cycles coming together at once right now and it's fascinating to hear it directly from Jeff himself. I think this discussion about seasonality...

How can this not be the chart of the week? It should be the chart of the century. Everyone always likes to talk about bubbles and how everything is in a bubble. But what they’re missing is the implications of said bubble popping. Remember we’ve seen price bubbles before, lots of them. One thing you’ll notice is that the bigger the fall in price, the longer the time necessary to repair it.

After 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 90% from its peak. It took 25 years to finally exceed that level for the first time. Towards the end of 1954, the Dow was able to make a new high and then continued higher for another 12 years before the next secular bear market began. It took a long time to repair that 90% crash, 25 years in fact. This is normal. But what is also normal is that from that repair came another 150% rally after initially exceeding those prior highs.

We're seeing similar activity today in Technology. After peaking in March of 2000, this sector index collapsed by over 82%. It wasn't until the past few months that we have finally been able to break to new all-time highs:

Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.

We've been on the right side of the market as we have focused on leading stocks and sectors and ignored the noise coming from the media. They want to run night time specials about markets in turmoil so they can sell ads to their precious sponsors at the expense of their consumers. We focus on the bond market that was screaming at us to buy stocks because we were not seeing any stress in credit. To the contrary, we saw credit spreads tightening while some were irresponsibly freaking out. We want to stick with this bullish approach to equities as there continues to be ...

We want to be buying stocks. I don't think I can be any more clear about that.

You guys know me as the obnoxiously bullish guy the past couple of years in the midst of "unprecedented pessimism". I'm willing to admit that I have an unfair advantage that I just pay attention to price and purposely ignore everything else that most of you have to endure. This focus has allowed me to see clearly what is actually taking place instead of assuming that who I'm listening to or reading knows what's going on.

Today I want to show you guys one single chart that I think tells the story of what the hell is going on here. It is awfully difficult for me to be bearish of stocks if the most important sectors in America are not just making new highs, but also breaking out to new relative highs. These leading sectors aren't just doing well, they're outperforming the rest.

U.S. Treasury Bonds have gotten absolutely destroyed, particularly on the shorter end of the curve. With interest rates exploding higher, money has been flowing beautifully out of the bond market. We're obviously happy to see that. It took a little longer to get going than we originally wanted it to, but we got there. So now the reevaluation process is upon us.

Today I want to talk about what we want to do here with respect to Bonds and Interest Rates and what some of our options might be. 

It's a bull market in stocks. The bond market is confirming that. Until we start to see evidence that suggests otherwise, we remain in the camp that this is a 'buy weakness' environment and not a time to be selling strength. To get 2018 going on a good note, Consumer Discretionary stocks broke out relative to the S&P500. This is one of the most important sectors in America and I believe it is still in a secular bull market.

Thank you again for being a founding member of Allstarcharts India. You came at a good time - the early stages of the build out of this Technical Analysis Research Platform. As you can see, the Monthly Conference Calls have been live and archived each month so far this year. We will continue with this routine every month moving forward and you can access all of them here: January 2018 and February 2018.

In the next couple of weeks you will be seeing several additions to the platform for Premium Members including several additional notes per week, an enhanced trade ideas page and an expansion of the Chartbook. We're really looking forward to this expansion that we have been working on for a long time....

Andrew Thrasher is the perfect guest to have on the podcast this month. His expertise in Volatility made him the 2017 Charles Dow Award winner, ironically the year that the US Stock market saw the lowest volatility on record. Today, Andrew is an Indianapolis-based Portfolio Manager at The Financial Enhancement group and we're thrilled to have him on. In this episode, Andrew walks us...

There is no denying that Technology has been a leader over the past 18 months. It's amazing how much this historic breakout in Tech was completely ignored in 2016 since U.S. elections are much sexier and help news people sell ads. "Forget the relative breakout in Tech, how does what Trump or Hillary said on the twitter today impact your portfolio?" You see the difference? We're not here to entertain or sell ads to sponsors. We're here to try and make money in the market.

In September of 2016 I was pounding the table about this monster 15-year base in Technology relative to the S&P500. There was no question that the path of least resistance was higher. As they say, the bigger the base, the higher in space. I encourage you to check out exactly what we were seeing at the time. Technology is up close to 50% since then while the S&P500 is up just about half that, 25%. So now the question is whether or not Technology, which has the largest weighting in the S...

Brazil just closed at an all-time daily and weekly closing high. These are not things we normally see in downtrends. Russia's MICEX also closed at new all-time highs. There is some serious strength coming from Emerging Market stocks and the data is still suggesting there is a lot more upside left out of this group. I think we're just getting started.

Today we're taking a look at some equally-weighted emerging market indexes that I put together and compare this group to other alternatives, like U.S. stocks and other developed markets such as Japan and Europe. There is an overwhelming theme here of rotation into Emerging Markets after years and years of underperformance. 2018 is a new year and emerging markets are leading us higher.

Brazil just closed at an all-time daily and weekly closing high. These are not things we normally see in downtrends. Russia's MICEX also closed at new all-time highs. There is some serious strength coming from Emerging Market stocks and the data is still suggesting there is a lot more upside left out of this group. I think we're just getting started.

Today we're taking a look at some equally-weighted emerging market indexes that I put together and compare this group to other alternatives, like U.S. stocks and other developed markets such as Japan and Europe. There is an overwhelming theme here of rotation into Emerging Markets after years and years of underperformance. 2018 is a new year and emerging markets are leading us higher.

Louise Yamada has been an inspiration to me for my entire career. Bringing nearly 4 decades of experience as a technical analyst, Louise adds a unique perspective on markets that makes her the perfect compliment to some of the younger guests that we've had on the podcast. Louise, who for a number of years received Institutional Investor's top ranking, was a special guest on "Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street" and you can still find her regularly being featured on...

Financials ripping to all-time highs is not something we see when stocks are in a downtrend. To the contrary, this is strong evidence of risk appetite for stocks. This seems to be something that is being underappreciated right now but I think is worth pointing to, again.

There are a lot of questions about the sustainability of the uptrend in stocks. Some might even say that stocks are "stretched" or have gone "too far too fast". But when you look at Financials, they're just getting going now. From many different perspectives, this sector has done nothing for a long time and is just now breaking out.

Next Monday I will by flying to Denver to speak at the local chapter of the CMT Association. This is my favorite time of the year to be in Colorado, so I'm thrilled to be there talking about charts and meeting with local traders and investors. I will do my best to walk you through my process from the top down and show you how I'm incorporating these tools in today's market environment.

This event is Free, but limited space is available. I encourage you to join us for a bunch of charts and then we'll grab some beverages afterwards with the Colorado Traders and Investors Group as well as members of the CMT Association. Here are all the details: