From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

We've been waiting patiently for Treasuries and other Sovereign Debt to make a move after flatlining since April.

Yesterday JC pointed out that US Rates made new all-time monthly closing lows, so let's take a look and identify how we need to be responding.

This is the video recording of our August 4th 2020 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to become the latest intern here at All Star Charts and as a part of the role, I’ll be writing a weekly note for the blog - documenting what I’m learning about technical analysis from the perspective of an intern.

Without further adieu, let’s jump into what stuck out to me this week.

Welcome to my new Monthly show that I'm doing with my friend Josh Brown. He is one of the most widely followed Financial Advisors in the country, and someone who I've been arguing with about markets for the better part of 2 decades.

Every month I'll bring a handful of the the most important Monthly charts that stood out during my review. In our first episode, I wanted to discuss the S&P500 making new all-time highs, Transports leading the way in July, Rates hitting new all-time lows and Bitcoin starting a new breakout.

This is the chart that I think tells the July story best. The further to the left the asset is, the closer it is to a new a 52 week high. The higher up the asset, the better its performance in July. Notice Transports in the upper right: Relative weakness overall, BUT the best performer this month, followed by Emerging Markets, Gold and base metals. The lonely US Dollar down below stands out doesn't it? 

This weekend we got a fresh batch of new Monthly Candlesticks. If you're not using these charts to help you identify primary trends, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. I rarely push a particular strategy or process. I usually just like to present the data, give you my conclusions, and then let you decide how, or if, you want to use it.

But for this, I don't care who you are, Monthly Charts are an invaluable tool. Even if you're a short-term trader or swing trader, we want to put all of that work into context, recognizing the major trends that are in place. Trust me, go build your own list of the most important charts and flip through them just once at the end of each month. I challenge you to start doing that every month and then come and tell me that it's not helpful. I dare you!

This week on the show I ask Howard about what Trading is going to be like in the Future. What are the hours like? How will we execute orders and on what kind of exchanges? This was really fun and something I rarely get to chat about in Public. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Check it out:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Every 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, as well as some of the things we're watching for in the month ahead.

With July just coming to a close, we're going to focus on that month's returns for insight into the near-term and analyze a variety of monthly charts in order to view the recent performance within the context of the underlying trends.

This week, we'll highlight the broad-based bullish performance across just about every asset class in July, as well as one of the tailwinds for this which was the weak US Dollar.

Here is our list of International Indexes. We continue to see outperformance from the US, China, and other areas of Asia such as Taiwan (which is not shown in the table, but made new all-time highs this month). The Shanghai Composite and Wilshire 5000 are outperforming their peers with significant gains over every timeframe.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Friday afternoon we discussed some of the potential headwinds for Crude Oil, Copper, and other risk assets.

After doing my International Chartbook review over the weekend, I wanted to share some of the things we're seeing and what it means for Equities as an asset class.

As August gets under way, it’s time to review positions with August options that remain open (haven’t already hit profit targets or been stopped out).

Most trades I put on for All Star Options tend to have a minimum duration of 30 days (short premium plays) and often as long as 6-8 months (for long premium plays). As options approach expiration, greeks like theta and gamma start to become my enemy and whipsaw my P/L. Therefore, as options and spreads get into the expiration month, my best practice is to put each position on notice — it’s time to take action.

Did you see the Rare Earth Metals Index get back above its 2016 lows?

Should we even bother to acknowledge their existence? We have Tech in the US and don't have to go dumpster diving into these little tiny serial underperformers!

While that is certainly true, today I want to point to something that we haven't seen in a long long time: Rare Earth Metals NOT making new lows.

You see, this in and of itself, is a huge development. I'm pretty sure these stocks were designed to just always go down. It's like a slot machine, just keep putting money in, and you'll eventually lose it all. Rare Earth Metals stocks have kind of been like that been exactly like that.

BUT, this is no longer the case, IF we are above those 2016 lows:

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 Tuesday August 4th @ 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 Tuesday:

What do we know for sure about New All-time Highs?

We know for a fact that they are NOT a characteristic of a downtrend. We've gone back and done the work, and as it turns out, New All-time Highs are normally things we see in uptrends!

With the S&P500 going out at New All-time Highs yesterday, and the Nasdaq making it now 3 months in a row of all-time highs, is the bet you want to make that we're in a downtrend for stocks?

This 10-month moving average strategy is one of the more simple, yet effective trend following systems that I know of. If the S&P500 closes the month above its 10-month moving average, we want to be long. If the S&P500 closes below its 10-month moving average, we do not.