I finally made it to India! I've been working on coming out here for a long time, but you know, life gets in the way. I've made an effort in the past year to travel, particularly to Asia to learn more about the culture, the people and the financial markets. Since last February I've traveled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Taipei and Philippines. It's easy for me to give a presentation and talk about what I'm seeing in the market. I've done that pretty much every day for as long as I can remember. Where I win is in the conversations I have prior to my events, and more importantly afterwards over cocktails and delicious food.

To be honest, what inspired me to travel and learn from other markets was India. Long story, but India was the first place I wanted to go to and learn and talk about markets. But as it turned out, it took me longer to get here than I would have wanted. But hey, I'm here now and that's what matters.

So why am in India? Well, the easy answer is why wouldn't I be in India? Have you looked at these markets? They might have more sectors than the United States, but the similarities in Sector Rotation, momentum, relative strength and...

I finally made it to India! I've been working on coming out here for a long time, but you know, life gets in the way. I've made an effort in the past year to travel, particularly to Asia to learn more about the culture, the people and the financial markets. Since last February I've traveled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Taipei and Philippines. It's easy for me to give a presentation and talk about what I'm seeing in the market. I've done that pretty much every day for as long as I can remember. Where I win is in the conversations I have prior to my events, and more importantly afterwards over cocktails and delicious food.

To be honest, what inspired me to travel and learn from other markets was India. Long story, but India was the first place I wanted to go to and learn and talk about markets. But as it turned out, it took me longer to get here than I would have wanted. But hey, I'm here now and that's what matters.

So why am in India? Well, the easy answer is why wouldn't I be in India? Have you looked at these markets? They might have more sectors than the United States, but the similarities in Sector Rotation, momentum, relative strength and...

While we always incorporate a top/down approach to markets, we ultimately end up with individual stocks ideas with favorable risk vs reward propositions skewed in our favor. That's the point of all this. As you can see here, we first start with the major Indexes, then work our way down to individual sectors and industry groups, and finally to the strongest stocks within the strongest sectors to find buying opportunities.

Today we are looking specifically at the Bank stocks within the NIFTY50 Index. Not all of them are good buying opportunities but there are a handful of them that I think we need to be buying on weakness.

We don't just want to look at one index when we make decisions about the risk appetite for stocks in the current market environment. The idea is to look at all of them collectively. All of the Indexes in India can be found in the Chartbook updated on a regular basis with comments and annotations.

Today I wanted to point out the strength that we're seeing in one Index that stands out compared to what we're seeing in another. The focus of this post is in the value of the NIFTY NEXT 50 compared to just looking at the NIFTY 50 in isolation.

This is a new year with fresh opportunities to buy some things and short others. It's a two way market. Anyone who has been sitting in Gold over the past 4 years is frustrated. If you've been in Gold the past 18 months, it must feel even worse. You could have pretty much bought anything else and done well: Stocks, Energy, Crypto. There is a lot of pent up pressure in the Gold market.

I've been in the camp that Gold has either been a stay away or a short. This has gone on for the past 18 months since our upside targets were hit. It's worked out relatively well for a long time, particularly the stay away from piece of that. The opportunity costs of being involved in this space has been off the charts.

I have to weigh all of the evidence as it comes in and isolate only the best risk vs reward opportunities regardless of the direction. Based on the overwhelming amount of positive momentum in gold, other metals and mining stocks, combined with...

We want to go into 2018 forgetting everything we thought we once knew. The process of approaching every market with an open mind is something that I think is very important. Our goals of profitability need to outweigh any emotions driven by ego.

I've been very critical of Gold, Silver and Precious Metals stocks since the Summer of 2016 when they hit the upside objectives we gave them earlier that year. Since then, it's been a sideways mess, with fast moves lower and abrupt mean reversions higher. These are characteristics of messy markets, not trending ones like U.S. Stocks were for example since, coincidentally (I doubt it) that Summer of 2016.

Today we're going to go over the best risk vs reward propositions in the Gold market as we enter 2018:

Scott Redler has been trading for almost 20 years. He's been through the ups and downs in the market on a daily basis and that is something I have a tremendous amount of respect for. Not many people can say this and still be alive and doing better than ever. I'm happy for him and could not be more thrilled to have him as a guest on the podcast. Today Scott is the Chief Strategic Officer at T3 Live where he gets to trade throughout the day as well as share his ideas...

As many of you already know, I do a lot of work on stock markets all over the world. It's part of my weight-of-the-evidence approach, but it also gives me the opportunity to learn from investors and traders who come from completely different cultures and bring a unique perspective. How else can we learn if not by exposing ourselves to new things?

Recently I was going through my India Nifty workbook where I keep all of my notes on the India Indexes like the NIFTY50, NIFTY500, NIFTY100, NIFTY Mid-caps, etc. It's a very similar workbook to the one I keep for the United States where I include the S&P500, DJIA, Russell2000, etc. I consider all of this to be the "top" of my top/down approach to equities. We start with the indexes, work our way down to the sectors and industry groups and ultimately to the individual stock level.

The NSE, or National Stocks Exchange of India, has this Index that they call the NIFTY NEXT 50. This index represents the next 50 companies that are not part of the NIFTY50, but still within the NIFTY100. What I noticed last week was that the NIFTY50 was hitting our upside objectives, while the NIFTY NEXT 50 was already in the process of...

We want to approach the market from the top/down and look at it from different perspectives. Today I want to point to two indexes in particular that tell two separate stories but each suggests higher prices are coming for stocks in India.

There are many different Indexes representing equities in India and they are each part of a group of stocks that share common characteristics. The idea is to look at all of them and use each one as a piece of a giant puzzle.

Here is a list of trade ideas organized by date, ticker symbol and directional bias. Please make sure you have clicked on the link and read the details surrounding the trade before acting upon any of them. Also, make sure you have checked with your financial advisor and tax accountants to make sure you are suitable to be executing what is discussed on this website. The risk management procedures and targets are detailed for each idea. Please read and review the terms and conditions page before making any trades of your own.

It's hard not to reflect on the past 12 months as we celebrate the New Year with our friends and family. For me it's both a blessing and a curse. While it's exciting to begin 2018 on a fresh note, I really didn't want 2017 to end. It's been an amazing year of learning and growing as an investor and a business man. It's not easy, but every challenge brings its own lessons and rewards. It's never a loss if you can learn from the experience.

Today I wanted to share what I'm thinking about the past year and what I'm expecting as we enter 2018. I do this because I believe it's therapeutic to put thoughts down on paper. I encourage everyone to keep some sort of journal, whether in a public forum like me or private. It's also important to me to continue to think out loud so readers can better understand where I'm coming from. I think we always need to know who is writing and producing the content we are consuming. Whether it's via text, audio, video or otherwise.

This is who I am:

We do not make end of 2018 forecasts. I think it's irresponsible to think that we have any idea of what will happen a year from now. We want to reevaluate our thesis as time goes on and new data comes in. This reevaluation process occurs consistently throughout the entire year. How else can we manage risk responsibly? Are we supposed to place our bets after New Years and just hope for the best? Come on.

Take a deep breath. Forget everything we did this year and only think about where we are today. The idea is to keep an open mind and keep every option available. If we've loved something in 2017, that doesn't mean we can't hate it in 2018. Just because we've been shorting something this year, doesn't mean we can't be buyers in the next coming quarters. We're not here to be right, we're here to make money. We can't forget that and let ego take priority over profitability. It's important to be aware of our cognitive behavior patterns and this is one of them.

Lastly, we want to ignore what the year-to-date returns were for different asset classes. I think the arbitrary Jan 1 to Dec 31st performance doesn't help us identify the direction of primary trends. So to...

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...

I don't make as many TV appearances as I used to when I lived in New York City, but when I'm town I love to swing by the FOX Business studios to chat with my old pal Liz Claman. She respects our Technical approach and understands the value that we bring to both institutional and retail investors.

This week I sat down with her to discuss the risk vs reward opportunities we currently see in the S&P500, Bitcoin and Steel Dynamics $STLD. I think this conversation was quick and to the point, just how we like it.

Here is the interview in full:

Pretty much every day for the past 15 years I've been asked the same question: What should I invest in? The way I get asked is always changing, of course. It's been, "How many houses should I buy in Miami since real estate only goes up?" to, "Which marijuana penny stock should I buy?" to, "Which crypto do I buy" (not if. which one?). The "sexy assets" of each era are all different, but the idea is the same. Because of my interest in markets, this question is constantly fired my way.

The answer I give isn't always well received, but it comes from the bottom of my heart. If you want to invest, where better to do that than in yourself? Go buy a book and spend the time to read it. Go reach out to someone you look up to and buy them a drink, or coffee or lunch and learn from them. Go travel to a far away land and meet with the locals. All of these "investments" are probably going to go a lot further than the litecoin you just bought because your nephew told you it's a good idea and you saw someone talking about it on the tv.

I am really lucky that I learned this very early on and it has helped me exponentially more than I could...

This week I was in New York City working on some really cool things that I'll be announcing next quarter. It has been an incredible year and I think 2018 is going to somehow be even better!  While I was in town, I swung by the Nasdaq Marketsite to chat with my friends over at BNN in Canada. They wanted me to talk about my thoughts on Bitcoin (of course), precious metals and U.S. equities.

It was a quick hit but I think I laid out some really interesting opportunities with very well defined risk parameters. As long as the potential reward is exponentially greater than the risk and the trend is on our side, I see little reason not to be all over these. There have been some very powerful trends in these markets over the past few years that I think continue into 2018.

Here is the video in full:

What often gets lost in the shuffle between whether or not to buy emerging market stocks is the fact that there are several important components within the group. Emerging markets aren't just one thing. They are a collection of major markets around the world that are not yet fully developed.

Today we're talking about the structural breakout we're seeing in shares of the India Exchange Traded Fund $INDY. Look at the former highs in 2011 that were tested again in early 2015. This year prices were finally able to break out above that key resistance to begin a new leg higher. These are characteristics of uptrends, not downtrends. The weekly bar chart tells the story well:

JC O'hara is the perfect compliment to all of the amazing guests that we've already on the podcast. Because his clients are primarily hedge funds and other buy side institutions, JC brings a unique perspective on market behavior, sentiment and investor psychology. As the Chief Market Technician at FBN Securities, JC gets to speak to some of the smartest investors in the market and we're lucky to have him sharing his insights and experiences with us in this episode. This week we talk about the current market environment for stocks using...

These are the registration details for our live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts India.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Tuesday, December 21st at 7 PM IST. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since our launch.

Here are the details for Tuesday:

In the world we live in today, it's hard to find someone that is excited about Consumer Staples. "Why, do they have a new digital coin out?" is what you might hear. While some people treat the the volatility in certain asset classes as something to be distracted about, we just look at bitcoin and its fellow coins as another investing vehicle. Consumer Staples have just as important of a role in our process. Today, I want to talk about the breakout we've seen this week in the Equally-weighted Consumer Staples Index Fund.

The way I learned it, the bigger the base, the higher in space! We want to buy breakouts from markets that have been range-bound for a while. Consumer Staples are one of them.

I have a workbook of charts where I keep the entire list of stocks in the Consumer Staples Sector. With the Equally-weighted Consumer Staples Index breaking out of a multi-year base, we want to find the stocks that are going to lead this sector higher.

Here is a list of the ones that stand out which are showing strength and a risk vs reward skewed in favor of the bulls following the longer-term and shorter-term uptrend in Consumer Staples:

One thing I feel has gotten lost in the whole "Stocks and Bitcoin make all-time highs every day" rhetoric is the overwhelming weakness in precious metals. Gold, Silver, Platinum and Gold Mining stocks are all making new lows, resuming their trend of lower lows and lower highs.

We've been aggressively bearish Gold, Gold Mining Stocks and anything precious metals really since October. Based on what we've seen since then, I see no reason to change our approach towards this market. To the contrary, I think the selling we've seen come in confirmed everything we had been seeing in September - a bunch of people getting caught long in a bull trap. It was classic. 

We look to Financials as a leader. We've never had a bull market in US Stocks without participation from the banks. They don't necessarily need to be leading but they do need to participate. When we see the S&P Financials Index going out at new 10-year weekly closing highs, it's hard to be bearish stocks as an asset class. This has been a big part of the aggressively bullish case I've been making since the summer of 2016. Meanwhile, the Broker Dealers Index is holding above its former all-time highs from 2007 and just beginning a new leg higher.

These are not bearish characteristics for stocks as an asset class.