When most of us think of bank stocks, we're generally not saying positive things. We have a bad taste in our mouth, particularly since early last year. But that's not the case in India.

Look at this chart. Which one is different?

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and eliminate the x and y-axes and and all labels eliminated to minimize bias. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. It can even be inverted or a custom index.

The point here is to not guess what it is, but instead to think about what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

The cool thing about working with smart people is being able to learn from them. Having Sean McLaughlin on our team has made everyone better, not just our clients but us as well. In today's video, we tackle the question of when it makes more sense to finance an options position by selling a different contract to collect the income vs simply just buying calls or puts. As usual, Sean does a nice job of explaining this in a way that anyone could understand.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Last week I had the pleasure of being on Real Vision TV where I recorded two segments, one on Bonds and Equities pairs trade (short EWJ/SPY).

The video to the Equities trade is here, but since I'm not sure if/when the free video about Bonds will be out I wanted to go through that trade for you all on the blog. And if the video does come out, I'll be sure to share it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Today there is no shortage of information: Social Media, Blogs, Newspapers, Television, Water-Cooler Gossip, etc., but we still have the same amount of time in a day. We all have to make a decision what we're going to pay attention to and what we're not.

Here's the video from a live interview I did on ET NOW, India's leading business news channel. It's amazing that I could not live further away than I currently do, yet we can still do this sort of thing. Their morning TV is my evening, but it works.

In this interview we discuss the ongoing rangebound market in US Stocks and then we shift gears to India's stock market. We talk about the rotation into small & mid-caps, key levels for both the NIFTY50 and Bank NIFTY as well as the relative strength we're seeing in the bank stocks, particularly ICICI and AXIS Bank.

Here is the video in full:

Greg Harmon is one of the OGs of the Financial Blogosphere. He has been consistently contributing to the community for over a decade. For you new comers, this is how it's done. Greg is the founder of Dragonfly Capital, where he is the portfolio manager and I encourage you to follow him on Twitter @harmongreg. He paid his dues early in his career traveling around the world and holding senior positions including Head of Global Trading, Head of Product Development, Head of Strategy and Director of Equity at JP Morgan, State Street and BNP Paribas. It was not until after all of this experience that he...

Tuesday's Mystery Chart received some interesting responses, with some of you stating that the bottom is in, while others said it's still too early to tell.

So let's get into what that chart is and why it's relevant.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday I posted a Mystery Chart that got a lot of replies.

Most said you'd be buyers at current levels or on a pullback, but a number of you were skeptical of the recent move and would be avoiding or fading it.

The feedback I got was interesting, so let's get right into the actual chart.

This week's Mystery Chart was an inverted daily line chart of the Metals & Mining ETF relative to the S&P 500. Below is the corrected chart.

Prices have put in a multi-year top, remain below support and a downward-sloping 200-day moving average, and momentum is in a bearish range. All signs continue to point to under-performance in this market sub-sector.

Click on table to enlarge view.

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From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

The Research and/or Trading business can be a very lonely endeavor for many, so I wanted to use this post to outline the role that collaboration plays in my process and why I feel it's so important.