Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts 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.

This month's Conference Call will be held on Wednesday April 13, 2016 at 7PM ET.

In this month's premium members conference call, we will discuss the following topics:

- How Low Can U.S. Stocks Go From Up Here??

- A Few Non-correlated Trades to Add To Your Portfolio

- What Is The Best Trade In Precious Metals Today?

- How Do We Trade Crude Oil Now?

- What Does The Behavior of Financials Say About Risk-Appetite

- Ags Can Be A Monster, But How High Can They Go?

As always, we'll leave as much time for Q&A as possible.

Here are the Registration Details:

From the desk of Thomas Bruni @BruniCharting

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The weight of the evidence has been building in favor of the bears over the last week or two, making the US equity weakness this week anything but surprising. Throughout the duration of this post I'll outline the evidence that I've been noticing over the last two weeks and what it means for us as market participants moving forward.

Yen Strength - The Yen broke out structurally late last year and hasn't looked back since. Tactically my upside targets were hit this week, but structurally this market has a lot more room to run. Given the high negative correlation between the Yen and US equities, this should continue to be a headwind for equity markets going forward.

We've had a heck of a rally in stocks over since late January, led by emerging markets, energy and metal stocks. Starting in mid-February the U.S. and other developed nations got the memo and started to play catch-up. We couldn't be happier with the performance of the stock market since then. But over the past couple of weeks all of our upside targets have been hit; all of the U.S. Indexes and sectors and about 90% of global indexes. So I've therefore been pretty neutral towards stocks since late last month, but I finally turned more bearish earlier this week.

Here is a market neutral trade that I think is definitely worth paying attention to. Whether you're bullish or bearish, this breakout is not something we should ignore:

From the desk of Thomas Bruni @BruniCharting

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From the Brazilian Real and Australian Dollar to the Turkish Lira, many global currencies have been gaining significant traction relative to the US Dollar over the past several weeks and months. These currency moves have also had significant impacts on the equity markets of their respective countries as they tend to be positively correlated.

Last week the New Zealand Dollar joined that group by breaking out across multiple timeframes.

I think there is a nice shorting opportunity in General Electric that we can take advantage of this month. There's nothing better than making money when a stock is falling. The reason is because stocks tend to move a lot faster on the way down, than on their way up. It's the old, Escalator Up & Elevator Down behavior.

The way I see it, $GE hit our upside target of $31 last November, so there's been no reason to own it. This target is based on the 161.8% Fibonacci extension of the massive consolidation throughout 2013-2015. Here is a weekly chart showing prices getting up there, pulling back in December and January, and now more recently rallying back up towards that $31 level and beyond:

We are super excited to announce today that we have added U.S. Dollar denominated charts of Bitcoin to our Members Only Chartbook. The charts included will be updated regularly on both Weekly and Daily timeframes. The Crypto-Currency's $6.5 Billion market-cap provides enough liquidity for many investors around the world. This has attracted huge venture capital investments in bitcoin-based companies from legendary tech investors such as Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz.

Members of Allstarcharts.com have been asking us to include this in our chart work and discussions. So as we always try and do, we listened and added them. Starting this week, Bitcoin charts on weekly and daily timeframes will be included in the list of Currencies, along with U.S Dollars, Australian Dollars, Japanese Yen, Canadian...

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to put all social media stocks into one category. We do our best with ETFs like $SOCL, but they can be heavily skewed by certain stocks and it ignores others with smaller market caps. Also, what does a company LinkedIn have to do with Yelp or Yahoo? I think we need to be careful grouping them into just one category, and keep in mind that they are all individuals with their own problems as well as their own unique positive qualities.

The reason I bring this up is because yesterday afternoon, Michael Santoli tweeted out a mystery chart asking followers whether it was a buy or sell:

It's been a while since I laid out a bunch of short ideas. As you guys know, I've been really bullish since late January. But hey, upside targets get hit, sentiment shifts, and things eventually change. Here are a list of Dow Components that I think are good shorting opportunities today:

From the desk of Thomas Bruni @BruniCharting

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The financial sector of the S&P 500 has been a major laggard over the last few years and 2016 is no exception with the sector down roughly 6% YTD.

The five year daily ratio chart of XLF / SPY represents this relationship. This ratio broke down out of a multi-year downtrend channel while momentum confirmed a bearish range by moving into oversold territory. These conditions, combined with the presence of a downward sloping 200 day moving average, suggest that the under-performance of financials relative to the broader market is likely to continue.

We've just witnessed one of the most epic rallies in the stock market that we've seen in a long time. Remember, this has been dominated by global indexes, particularly Emerging Markets, not U.S. Stocks. We could not be happier to see this rally progress so well as we've been pounding the table to be long since late January. By mid-February, the U.S. and other developed markets put in their bottoms and started to play catch up to the rest of the world. But the underperformance of the U.S. has continued anyway.

Today's Chart Of The Week represents what could potentially be the start of a major structural improvement for U.S. Stocks:

Polarity is where it all begins, guys. This is supply and demand 101. We talk about momentum and we talk about trends. We use words like Fibonacci, Divergence and Moving Average. This is all fine and dandy, but all of these are only a supplement to actual price analysis. Price is the only thing that pays. So price, by definition, is the most important technical indicator that exists.

Today we are going to discuss the Principle of Polarity. In order to do so, we first need to define support and resistance:

This morning I was on the Benzinga pre-market radio show, where I am invited to come on as a guest every other week. So basically twice a month a rap with the boys about the direction of the Stock Market, both U.S. and globally, Interest Rates & Bonds, and more recently the agricultural commodities.

Here is this mornings radio hit in full. Enjoy:

I come on at the 57:30 minute mark:

We've been pretty neutral the majority of the U.S. Stock Market indexes over the past couple of weeks since they first starting hitting our upside targets. Some of them, like the Nasdaq100 and Mid-cap400 had yet to reach out upside objectives, but we are approaching those now. I will argue, though, that the developments we've seen are constructive, both in price behavior and in the breadth itself.

Here is what I think we need to keep in mind with each of the major Indexes. We're using only bar charts today in order to put extra emphasis on price for this particular exercise:

From the desk of Thomas Bruni @BruniCharting

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From late January until today, there have been tactical breakouts in currencies of countries with significant commodity exposure relative to the US Dollar. This has provided a tailwind to a number of emerging market equities that have subsequently followed through to the upside. Many of these equity markets are concentrated in Latin America, but areas like South Africa, Africa, Australia, and Turkey have benefited as well.

Whether or not these tactical moves will continue and develop into long-term trends is entirely unknown, but the risk/reward in the US Dollar/Brazilian Real looks particularly skewed in favor of the bears here.

Over the past few days I've received a number of requests from members asking me to post a the updated charts on my favorite U.S .Stock Market short right now. In last week's letter I mentioned how Utilities were not a place we wanted to be long and there were a few ways to take advantage of the individual components of the sector.

Today I want to dive into those individual charts:

From the desk of Thomas Bruni @BruniCharting

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Over the past few weeks there have been some interesting developments in Agriculture commodities, and Soybean Oil is no exception.

Before we get into the price action, I think it's worth noting that we're in the middle of a seasonally strong period for Soybeans, while hedger positioning and public sentiment are coming off multi-year extremes. These should both continue to provide a tailwind for prices of Soybean related markets in the weeks and months ahead.

From the desk of Thomas Bruni @BruniCharting

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I look at a few hundred charts per day across multiple timeframes, and thousands each weekend, but I very rarely find an idea that's actionable at that particular moment. This begs the question of why I look at so many charts if they rarely lead to actually putting on a trade, to which the answer brings us to the title of this post.

When utilizing a top-down approach to technical analysis, every liquid global asset class provides some type of information that's useful, even if you don't trade that asset class directly. Instead, each new piece of data adds to the pool of information that we as market participants use to make decisions. When the weight of evidence suggests a more probable outcome, that is when it's appropriate to put on a trade that expresses that theme or thesis in the most capital-efficient way possible.

I just finished my Commodities and Currencies review for the week and wanted to share some of my notes. Here you go:

For long time readers of All Star Charts, you guys pretty much know my deal. I put in more work that most people and I include markets in my studies that the majority of investors choose to ignore. In order to take a weight-of-the-evidence approach to the market, I need to, in fact, weigh all of the evidence. Therefore, I have to look at every single stock market in the world on both short-term and long-term time frames.

From Latin America, to Europe, to Asia Pacific, all developed economies and emerging markets are on my list. I include every U.S. Stock Market Index, from large-cap S&P500 and DJIA to Small-cap Russell2000 and everything in between. We look at every U.S. Sector and sub-sector, from Energy, to Financials, to Gold Miners and Technology. Then break it down to the individual stock level. On the commodity side, we review 16 commodity futures contracts from Energy to Metals and Agriculture. Then we turn to currency markets, for both informational purposes and trade ideas. Finally, we review a long list of intermarket relationships to help recognize where money is flowing and also again, for trade ideas. The list from where this process begins can be found...

This Thursday March 24th, I will be presenting at an all day live webinar presented by Investor Inspiration. I will be joining six additional speakers and my time slot begins at 1:45PM ET.

During my session, we will be discussing some of the basic technical analysis principles that I incorporate in my work every day. These include Supply & Demand analysis, Momentum, Fibonacci, Correlations and how to use Moving Averages for trend identification. 

We’ve come a long way in the last 3 months.

Back in November of last year, I decided to start writing an “Open Letter About the Current Market Environment” and posting it on my blog. This was just a summary of what I call my “homework” (flipping through hundreds of charts every day to find the best risk/reward setups). I was already doing the work so I thought why not share it with my followers and see if it resonated with them.

As you know, I'm a firm believer in listening to the markets when they speak. And in the case of my open letter, the "market" definitely spoke. My inbox was literally flooded with emails thanking me for the insightful trades included in my letters and asking when the next one would be posted. At that moment, I knew I was on to something BIG.