From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The Dow is one of the most important major averages in the world. We monitor it religiously as it has historically been an excellent gauge for the broader market.

This week three old-school Dow stocks- Exxon $XOM, Raytheon $RTX, and Pfizer $PFE, were replaced with some fresh blood from the likes of Salesforce $CRM, Honeywell $HON, and Amgen $AMGN. JC wrote about why the Dow is so important to our process and what these changes could mean earlier this week, which you can read here.

In this post, we'll take a deeper look at the impact of this restructuring by analyzing the relative strength trends of the new and old holdings. We'll also discuss the Apple stock split, as it will also have major implications on the Dow's future composition.

Long story short, we think the recent reconstruction of its constituents leaves the Index in a much stronger position for the future.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on this week's Mystery Chart. We had a lot of good answers this week. Many respondents were cautious of the waning momentum but on balance, most of you were buyers. We are too.

It was a chart of the iShares MSCI Netherlands ETF $EWN which just broke out of a 13-year base to fresh all-time highs (shown below).

But it's not just the Netherlands making new record highs, the All-Country World Index $ACWI just made new all-time highs as well. There aren't many things more bullish than World Equity Indexes trading at their highest levels in history.

In this post, we'll highlight the positive breadth characteristics we're seeing within Global Equity Markets and outline trade setups in some of the strongest countries around the world- including the Netherlands, as a way to express our bullish thesis.

But first, here's why we're so bullish on International Equities in the first place. Check out these new highs for ACWI.

Sector rotation has been driving the major equity indices across the globe higher, but they've all got one sector that's holding them back.

Today we're looking at that sector, Financials, to outline why this week's action is important and how we're approaching this segment of the market.

First, let's start with the Nifty Financial Services Index in India, which comprises about a third of the overall market's weighting. Prices have been struggling with this resistance level near 11,300 and are now trying to break out above it to new recovery highs.

On a relative basis, the index is trying to hold above long-term support against the Nifty 100 and turn higher. Outperformance, or at least in-line performance from the market's largest sector would shift this from a major headwind to a major tailwind for stocks as an asset class.

Click on chart to enlarge view. 

Don't Fight Papa Dow

That's how I learned it. You'll hear my friend Ralph Acampora say that all the time!

"You Never Want To Fight Papa Dow"

My interpretation is that there is wisdom in the Dow Components. If you want to know which way the market is headed, focus on those 30 stocks.

I'm not going to get into the discussion about whether the Dow is the best index or not. I've made my case before and stand by it today more than ever. If you have a problem with Dow Jones or Standard & Poors, stop complaining about it and just go build a better index. It's not that hard. We do it every day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, is a perfectly good index and gauge of stock market strength or weakness. One of the best parts is that there are only 30 components!

Hellooo??? Do you want to go through 500 stocks? Or 3000 in the case of the Russell3000?

Or just 30?

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 preview some of the things we're watching in order to profit in the current market environment.

This week, we're going to highlight a number of critical Stock Market Indexes and Sectors, as well as assets in the FICC Markets that are approaching logical levels of overhead supply and pose the question... "Are risk assets due for some corrective action or consolidation?"

JC, What do you mean rotation into the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

This is a bubble!

It can't possibly be the beginning of the Dow's move.

Wait, can it?

Well, despite all the hype about a bubble and the ridiculous rhetoric about a dislocation between wall street and main street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hasn't really done much the past 10 weeks. It hasn't made much progress at all, even if you include the past 2 weeks of gains. In fact, the last 2 weeks are all the gains since early June.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Transportation average has been the leader and broke out above those former June highs a while ago:

This week we're looking at two stocks that have pulled back to their risk management level.

It's "go time" for these names. If they're going to move higher, this would be a logical level for them to propel higher off of.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood."

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

We have some new additions coming for how we generate the list of most popular names, which we'll explain more each week as we add new data sets. There are so many new data sources popping up that all we need to do is organize them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

The S&P 500 finally achieved new highs this week. The market is clicking on all cylinders as breadth and participation continues to broaden, and favorable risk/reward setups are popping up all over the place. Let's dive into the most popular tickers this week and see what's going on "under the hood" in these hot names.

This week on Happy Hour with Traders, I brought together some of the best minds when it comes to stock market breadth. You see all the breadth charts on twitter and you always hear debate about whether market breadth is weakening or improving. I think this round table discussion clears up a lot of misconceptions about the subject. I think it also gave each of us new ideas about how to approach the market from a weight-of-the-evidence perspective. I know I definitely got some new ideas that I want to start to do some more work on.

This is why we have these conversions. I'm fortunate to have really smart friends around the world that all view markets in their own unique ways. So I'm going to try my best to show them off so you can learn from them too!

Here's the latest Happy Hour with special guests Andrew Thrasher, Willie Delwiche, Mike Hurley and Steve Strazza. Enjoy!

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 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.

This week's episode is linked below, enjoy!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone who responded to this week's Mystery Chart. Responses were somewhat mixed. It was a daily chart of the iShares Medical Devices ETF $IHI.

What we really wanted to know is whether or not investors are buying these kinds of bullish continuation patterns right now. Many alluded to the underlying trend being higher but still wanted to wait for the flag pattern to resolve before taking action.

This is a prudent approach and we're looking at the chart in a similar light. With that said, we're also viewing setups like this within the context of what is going on in other areas of the market. In other words, as more and more of these patterns resolve to the upside, which they are, the higher the likelihood is that others will follow their course.

In this post, we'll walk through our top-down approach to highlight why we like Medical Devices right now and then drill into some of our favorite setups as a way to express our bullish thesis.

One of the reasons we've remained so bullish on Equities as an asset class is because of the continued expansion in the number of stocks participating to the upside.

In this week's "Chart Of The Week," we want to highlight a simple metric that can be used to identify the breath of the Indian stock market.