This week on Happy Hour with Traders, I sit down with my old friend James Bartelloni. Some of you have seen him before, Chart Summit 2018 or on the podcast: Season 2 Episode 10. For those of you who are new to Bart and his ways of approaching markets, I encourage you to set aside some time to hear him out.

I first met Bart back in 2006 when I began studying for my CMT Exams. Back in the day they used to have this thing called CMTi, where CMT Charterholders would help candidates prepare for the various levels and teach classes online. They don't do that anymore, which is unfortunate, because there's no way I would have passed that CMT Level 2 exam without Bart's help.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 give our outlook and some of the things we're watching for in the week ahead.

This week, we're going to highlight our US Index and Sector ETF tables and focus on the rotation we're seeing into more offensive areas of US Equities. We'll then tie this into what we're seeing across the FICC universe.

The stocks in the Dow Jones Transportation Average are getting the bid that they needed for this overall market to continue its march higher. Going back and doing the work, it's hard for stocks as a group to keep ripping without rotation into some of the underperforming areas. Transports were right near the top of our underperformer list for a long time.

This is no longer the case. We've already talked about how Transports were the best performermers in the world for the month of July. This weekend we also pointed to the change in trend relative to the S&P500.

Today, let's look deeper into the components of the Dow Jones Transportation Average. Remember there are 20 of them and consist of Airlines, Rails, Trucks, Logistics etc. This chart plots the drawdown from 52week highs on the x-axis and the y-axis represents the performance since June 5th, which was the former highest weekly close for the index:

Click on Chart to Zoom in

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Welcome to the second edition of “Louis’ Look”, where I share the key lessons I’ve learnt over the past week through interning at All Star Charts. You can read the first post here.

As with any week working with this bunch, plenty was learnt, so let’s jump right into it.

I don't know if I've made myself clear enough. It's getting pretty obnoxious at this point isn't it?

We talk about this internally sometimes (ahem strazza), that we sound like a broken record.

My response is that we should be aware of our own behavior. The simple fact that we are recognizing, that yes, we are indeed being super annoying and just saying the same things over and over again, is information. It's really important to identify that.

Why? What does this mean? To me, it means that what's been working keeps working. And what needed to start working for those things to continue are working now too.

Exhibit A has to be the Dow Jones Transportation Average breaking out to new highs BEFORE the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Wait, What???? New phone who dis? 

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Precious Metals are getting all of the Commodity attention these days, but the truth is there is a lot more opportunity in the space than just Metals.

In this post, I want to outline why we think Natural Gas is in a new bull market and how we're taking advantage of it.

Here's the weekly chart of Natural Gas we've been using as a roadmap for the last few years. In March, prices approached long-term support near 1.60 and volatility began to pick up, signaling to us that a trend change was potentially underway. And on top of that, momentum failed to get oversold which suggested sellers were getting exhausted.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

The Fixed Income, Commodity, and Currency markets are near and dear to my heart. Ever since I began learning Technical Analysis, I've always loved analyzing things that are "off the beaten path." This included everything from Interest Rates to Soybeans to the Norwegian Krone. Equities are great and all, but this is the stuff that gets me up in the morning.

In addition to the blog posts we do on the site, I've wanted to explore new ways to share that passion with you all and show why even if you're not investing in these markets directly, they're worth paying attention to.

That brings us to my new weekly show, "What The FICC?"

In this weekly video series, I'll be highlighting the most important chart or theme from these three asset classes while doing my best to tie that analysis back to Equities through an intermarket signal or a trade idea.

The first two pilot episodes are linked down below. I hope you enjoy them and look forward to seeing you all back here each week for a new episode!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Mystery Chart. Most of you either wanted to buy or do nothing and wait for more information.

The chart was the iShares Global Silver Miners ETF $SLVP. We're bullish metals so we agree and want to be buying this over the long-term as well.

With that said, we want to be cautious at current levels for reasons we'll outline in this post. First, let's look at the updated chart.

I feel like at this point if they're not on my podcast, I'm on theirs. It's pretty funny when you think about it.

The idea here is to just continue the conversation. It's been a habit of mine for decades. Whether it's over dinner, cocktails, on someone's podcast, video, doesn't matter. I've found it really helpful to talk to smart people on a regular basis.

One of the things I enjoy most is learning more about technology, particularly fintech, and what sorts of tools we're going to use in the future. This is the greatest time to be alive in human history. I'm on the edge of my seat every day waiting for what's next. In some cases, we're the ones building what's next, and that's also really cool to watch. The way I see it, if we're not investing in Technology, it's a big mistake. We know what we think will be helpful to us internally better than anyone else. So why shouldn't we just build it? (we're looking to hire 2 more engineers: Ping Me).

This is a behind the scenes video of our team meeting held on July 6, 2020 4PM ET.

Every quarter we put out our Playbook focusing on the most important themes around the world to take advantage of, and just as importantly, which areas to avoid. This is usually about 150 pages and really dives deep into stocks, rates, commodities, forex and the intermarket relationships between all of them.

I hope this gives you some perspective on how we approach markets using our Top/Down Approach. We've always found it helpful to understand where people are coming from and why they say certain things. I hope this can give you some of that context about us. I think it also helps you get to know our team a little better. Enjoy!

Anyone who traded in the late 90's only referred to Microsoft stock as "Mister Softee." It was stupid, as many stock nicknames were, but that's what it was. And you seemingly couldn't go a day without hearing "Mister Softee is making new highs!" from summer 1998 until early 2000.

I almost have PTSD from it.

Fast forward to today. Microsoft doesn't get the same media attention today as it did back then, now being overshadowed by the Amazons, Facebooks, Googles, Apples, and Teslas, of the world. But the price action is definitely giving me flashbacks.

And the ASC research team has a gaudy 323 price target for Microsoft $MSFT over the next several months which has me interested in playing along with options.