Excluding price action itself, relative strength has to be the most underappreciated indicator.

It's impossible to outperform if you own assets exhibiting relative weakness.

If a stock is underperforming, there's a reason why. It's not until months after the fact do investors discover the "fundamental" drivers anchoring that stock.

The same can be said for when a stock is outperforming.

Look at it like holding a beach ball underwater. You can feel the pressure on your arms, and when that pressure is released, the ball explodes into the air.

Think about the selling pressure in the market: When the selling pressure alleviates, the stocks showing relative strength tend to be the first ones that shoot higher.

These principles are universal across every market.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Everyone wants to know where the dollar is headed next.

It’s great investors are showing interest in the dollar, while understanding the impact it has on risk assets at the moment. 

But I have no idea where the dollar is headed. No one does.

Regardless, I can still form a framework to help make the best logical guess despite an incomplete data set. That’s what we do at All Star Charts!

So let’s recap three points I’ve made regarding the dollar in recent months that I believe hold the greatest weight…

The Time and Place for a Bounce

Given strong seasonal tailwinds and a critical shelf of former highs acting as potential support, the likelihood of a dollar bounce last month seemed probable…

Every investor is different.

We have different time horizons, objectives, goals, and appetites for risk.

It's for this reason that the endeavor of trading is often a lonely one; you're forced into fine-tuning what works best for your needs.

What works for me isn't going to work for you.

This is self evidently true.

It seems to me that one of the overlooked elements of this discussion is the variability of human personality.

This is something I've been pondering as of late, so I thought I'd lay bare my potential fallacious thoughts to see if we can strive closer to some answers.

[9/7: updated stop to 56]

As promised during yesterday's The FLOW show, I'm following up on a possible trade idea we discussed.

However, after Strazza and I put our heads together with the rest of the Analyst team this morning, we're going to attack an opportunity in Schlumberger $SLB from a different angle -- one that can be rewarding regardless of which direction the stock takes.

Where I come from do you know what we call higher lows and higher highs?

Uptrends.

Do you know what stocks do in bull markets?

They go up.

And speaking of going up, we just watched the Small-cap Russell2000 Index go out at new 10-month highs.

Do you know what's not evidence of a downtrend?

New 10-month highs.

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Monday February 6th @ 6PM ET. 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 2015.

Here are the details for Monday evening:

It’s easy to follow a trading plan when the price action is moving our way. We feel like geniuses.

Look at me! I’m so smart! The stock market is doing exactly what I planned for it to do! Let’s go car shopping!

But how do I feel if the price action goes the other way?

Assuming I’ve put a trading plan together that accounts for both the possibility of being right AND the possibility of being wrong, why should I feel any different when the price goes the wrong way?

What’s the point of putting together a detailed trading plan if I later exit the position following the first price move in the opposite direction I hoped for?

Why go through all that effort?

It's a market of stocks.

People forget that.

They choose to obsess over every tick in the S&P500 or Nasdaq instead of recognizing what's happening among the actual components of those indexes.

As it turns out, this has become one of our competitive advantages.

If you're wondering why we tend to be ahead of the curve on changes in major trends, I would point to this.

Most people don't have the time (or are too lazy) to sit there and count how many stocks are going up vs how many are going down.

I think about thinking quite a bit.

Maybe it's because I've read too many Annie Duke books.

But as much as I love Annie's work, it's the whole behavioral finance thing that I'm obsessed over.

I can't get enough of it.

To name a few of my favorites, Dr. Brett Steenbarger, Denise Shull, Daniel Crosby, Andrew Menaker and of course....

...the homie Dr. Phil Pearlman:

It's the weekly Gold Rush!

While Gold futures digest overhead supply, strength broadens across the metals space.

Check it out...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Plenty of gold bugs have Krugerrands buried in their backyard or basement –  if not secured in a safety deposit box at their local bank.

It’s no wonder gold falls under the “end-of-the-world” category of assets.

Regardless, gold prices can also rise with risk assets.

I raise this point not only as an important reminder but because it’s pivotal to understanding our bullish thesis for precious metals.

It’s a metals story….