I was lucky to spend a few weeks in Europe earlier this month meeting with customers, colleagues and old friends. For me it's easy to get up in front of a crowd and talk about the charts that I've been staring at every day for over a decade. I can practically draw them for you at this point. Where I really win is in meeting with investors and traders from completely different cultures both before and after my events. I just got back from a trip to Athens, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin. Between meetings, interviews and presentations, I was able to learn a lot from other investors and gain new perspective on things. That's the point of all this. If we're not going out of our way to learn, then what are we doing?

In this conversation, I sit down with our very own Sean McLaughlin to talk about some of my experiences on the road.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

The good news is the S&P 500 and several other large-cap US indexes are back at all-time highs, however, the bad news is there remains a lack of confirmation from breadth and momentum readings around the world.

Needless to say, it was easier to be buying stocks last month than it is today, but let's avoid getting into the weeds and simply look at the number of markets around the world above their 2018 highs.

Below is a table of the global equity markets we track prices in their local currencies. While there are performance stats from several key inflection points like the January 2018 and September highs in the S&P 500, as well as its bottom on December 24th, we want to focus on the left-most "Change From 2018 Highs" column.

This compares the market prices now to where they were at their highest point in 2018, or in other words, it gives us an idea of what the trend is.

Currently, the median stock market in the world is 6.22% off its 2018 high.

Click on table to enlarge view.

There are a lot of interesting charts out there around the world. The current market environment has provided us with a ton of opportunities in multiple asset classes. We've talked about stocks, we discussed commodities, and today I want to focus on the Bond Market. Both Interest Rates and the most liquid exchange traded fund are at critical levels that we need to watch. 

Boeing got hit hard in recent months due to trouble with their planes and a grounding of their 737 Max fleet. But here's the real newsflash that we should be paying attention to: Airlines still need new airplanes because humans still want to fly. Of course, we don't really care what the "news" is about stocks we trade. We just follow price and volume action -- both of which are pointing to an opportunity here.

Here is the video from my BNN Bloomberg interview this week. We talk about the implications of a weaker US Dollar, including what that would do to stocks, emerging markets, metals and others. I've been waiting for it all year. But think about it. We've already seen some of the things we would expect to see in a weaker Dollar environment. Gold strong, for example, and an inability for the Euro to go lower. So for me, I think this Dollar fall is just getting started.

A lot of the jokes in my community begin and end with gold bugs. I can't think of any group that has been so wrong for so long. You could have literally been in anything else the past 8 years and made money. It's all good though. What goes around comes around. Gold will have its day again, and I think it could be around the corner.

The US Dollar has been a big focus of ours all year (see here, here and here). The implications of the US Dollar's next move will be felt worldwide. I've been in the camp that the US Dollar Index below 98 is positive for stocks and that a drop in the Dollar will most likely coincide with a rotation into emerging markets and european equities. While the Dollar has remained below 98, it’s been more of a sideways range that anything else. But we may have just seen the beginning of this collapse.

Here's...

Markets appear to want to move higher. Regardless of our opinions, regardless of our fears, the only thing worth paying attention to is Price. And prices look higher. Heading into summer, let's go on a trip.

One thing we know about all-time highs is that they are not evidence of a downtrend. With near-record pessimism towards stocks recently, it's fun to watch the ones that are breaking out to all-time highs. I'm not really sure what everyone is so angry about, these long bases are slowly breaking out one by one, not breaking down.

Something we've been pointing to all along is that for the major indexes to take out resistance from the past 17 months, we need to see an expansion in participation to the upside. In other words, more stocks, sectors and indexes breaking out to all-time highs. This expansion of breadth is likely to lead and/or coincide with an upside resolution in indexes like the S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Global100 Index and many others. 

It feels good to be back in the office listening to music and ripping through charts! This is something I love to do. The past few weeks were incredible. I met with a lot of smart people throughout Europe and I'm back with new perspective, new ideas and new friends. You can't put a price tag on those experiences. When people ask me what they should invest in, I can't help but answer with: yourself. Invest in what you're doing and what you're learning. I believe this to be true now more than ever.

The first thing that stands out to me as I work through my chartbooks is how little things have changed, particularly in the stock market. The S&P500 is up 1% since I left a month ago. The rangebound market we've been in continues to progress in the same direction, or lack thereof. In mid-May I pointed to the Global 100 as the chart that tells the stock story the best. At that point, we were looking at a 3rd test of overhead...