From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

For our timeframe, we prefer to look bigger picture and not get caught up in the day to day noise.

That's why we have our Monthly Candle Strategy Sessions and Monthly Conference Call where we focus on the broader themes and how to take advantage of them in the market.

One of those themes we've discussed ad-nauseam is the "reflation trade", so today we're getting our magnifying glass out to look at a few daily charts that suggest more trouble/volatility could be ahead for cyclical assets in the near-term.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Last week’s Mystery Chart featured an ominous rounding top, complete with price violating key lows as it aggressively collapsed. 

Today, we’re going to turn that frown upside down. It actually wasn’t a rounding top at all.

We inverted the chart, as we often do, in an effort to make some of you out there aware of any bullish or bearish biases you may have. 

In other words, if you were buying this chart (which most of you were NOT), you are really a seller. And if you’re a “seller” who only bought the Mystery Chart because you have a bullish bias, you might now be wondering why you would ever bet against such a nice base. 

When we flip this chart around, you can now see we’re looking at a massive base on Japan’s Nikkei 225.

In this post, we’ll check in on the Nikkei and see what market breadth is signaling about the internal strength of the Japanese stock market.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Welcome to this week’s edition of Louis’ Look, where I document the lessons I’ve learned in the last week through interning at All Star Charts. Last week, I touched on the necessity of a game plan in life and the financial markets.

Today’s topic, however, highlights a mistake I think many of us fall prone to in the financial world.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Louis Sykes @Haumicharts

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

Like we discussed last week, Equity Markets are becoming more of a mixed bag. This week, we'll expand on this theme.

Prices continue to flirt with the risk levels we've outlined for various assets in recent weeks. We still believe the weight of the evidence is in favor of the bulls, but with so many assets at inflection points, we're paying close attention to every new day's data as it comes in.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended October 2, 2020.

What we do is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names. There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Whether we're measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers... there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.

This is the video recording of our October 2, 2020 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

This week I chat with Howard about the things that he just doesn't think are going to happen. What can we check off? He mentions major moves in the Nasdaq and also Apple missing on a quarter or new product.

He then flips the script and asks me about what's changed in my life since becoming a father. Tune in to find out!

In this episode I get to chat with one of my all-time favorite journalists, Frances Horodelski. She was one of the first people to interview me on TV when I was still in my 20s and I don't forget that. She believed in me early on. That's really cool.

We've continued to do interviews together over the years but today I flip the script and ask HER the tough questions. We discuss the role of Technical Analysis in both markets and financial media. As a former Wall Street analyst herself, she brings unique perspective and experience to traditional media. This was really informative and a lot of fun!

Here is the episode in full:

One of our favorite opportunities that was discussed in last week's Under the Hood segment finally triggered our entry today. And continued elevation of options premiums in out-of-the-money calls sets up a great way for us to participate in a bullish move in a limited risk fashion.

Today we're taking a look at a stock in the Consumer Discretionary Sector. Ticker symbol $MCD

They make burgers, fries, chicken and a variety of desserts. The food is okay, I guess. The stock is way better.

This looks like a year-long base trying to break out to new all-time highs.

We only want to be betting on this long if it is above 220. Otherwise, we can't make that breakout argument. Our upside target is 280.

So far today, I’ve ignored what I can only assume are tens of thousands of posts and articles dissecting last night’s debate. I’ve said it before — As market participants, the election doesn’t interest us. It’s the change in seasonal strength this time of year that has our attention. 

But I’m sure they’ll continue pumping out more political gossip than anyone could possibly absorb. After all, it’s 2020. Most folks are stuck at home, anxious, and searching for any meaningless distractions they can find.  

If you’re nervous about the election or the markets, tonight’s your chance to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. September is over and the fourth quarter begins tomorrow. That means we have fresh batch of monthly candles to review! It doesn’t get any better than that… 

If you do one thing this week, it needs to be a thorough review of these longer-term trends. It’s one of my most important rituals that allows me to tune out the noise better than most.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?