If you weren't too busy reading reports of upcoming recessions, you may have noticed that the MSCI World Index broke out to new all-time highs this month. The award for best ETF Ticker goes to the good folks at iShares: $URTH

After a 21-month bear market, the planet Earth is now starting a new leg higher. I continue to believe very strongly that if stocks are above last year's highs, it is incredibly irresponsible not to be aggressively long.

There is information everywhere. We analyze both the Indexes and the ETFs. We look at markets all over the world priced in both local currency and in US Dollars. We often use Gold as the denominator as well as the Indexes themselves to analyze relative strength. It's one big giant web of money flow.

Today I want to call your attention to an interesting divergence that has come at important turning points in the past. Specifically I'm referring to the Wisdom Tree Hedged Exchange Traded Funds for Europe and Japan: $HEDJ and $DXJ respectively. These funds are priced in local currencies as opposed to most other ETFs around the world that are priced in US Dollars.

First, here is the Europe Index Fund priced in Euro breaking out to all-time highs. I've been chuckling to myself a lot lately because when was the last time you could say the words "Europe" and "all-time" highs in the same sentence with a straight face?

Technical Analysis doesn't give us all the answers. But it certainly goes a long way in helping us ask the right questions. That's really what this is about. No one knows what is going to happen next. Contrary to popular belief, this makes it an even playing field (don't @ me). Where the advantage truly lies is in those who analyze the behavior of the market vs those who ignore it.

There are many investors, most in fact, who completely disregard the behavior of the market in favor of some other brilliant strategy they believed they've come up with. My point is, if at the end of the day, price is the only thing that will pay us, why not start and end the entire process with the study of that price?

Not to get too philosophical on you guys, but just try to think about the things you're thinking about. What are the questions you're asking? Because you certainly don't have the answers. You have no answers, and neither do I. We have, what we think, are higher probability and lower probability outcomes. But we don't actually know.

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I discuss the relentless buying pressure in stocks throughout the first half of November. Even when the Dow Jones Industrial Average did not register a positive day, the market didn't really go down either. In fact, we've just seen the two smallest down days in the history of the Dow Averages that date back to the 1880s. This is what we're talking about here. Some might think we're overbought, but I would argue that the overbought readings are just normal characteristics of uptrends. They should be overbought. I still think the Dow sees 30,000.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday's Mystery Chart had a lot of people talking and guessing (incorrectly, as usual), so thank you all for your feedback and participation.

Overall the feedback was that the chart was a "no-touch" until a breakout.

With that as our backdrop, let's get into it.

This week's Chart of The Week revisits a topic we've written about many times over the last few years, Small-Caps vs Large-Caps.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Global breadth continues to improve as US stocks press up against all-time highs and many individual countries make multi-year/all-time highs.

Today I want to look at a breakout happening in a market that doesn't get much attention, Israel.

About ten days ago we outlined why it appeared Indian Equities were due for a pause from a tactical perspective and that's what we're getting.

With no movement in the major averages, there's nothing to do, right?

Wrong!

In this post, I outline a few of the stocks we're watching and why they're important.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Marijuana stocks have been an absolute disaster for longs in 2019, but one chart suggests that after a nearly 60% decline, the Horizons Medical Marijuana ETF and its components are set up for a counter-trend rally.

Here's the daily chart we've been using to guide us since the Horizons Medical Marijuana Life Sciences ETF (HMMJ) came public in April 2017. Following a quick double, prices settled into a 21-month range between 15 and 26 that was broken to the downside in late September after a failed breakdown and bullish momentum divergence were left unconfirmed.

After falling 35% from that failure and 60% from its 2019 high, the ETF is now showing signs of waning downside momentum as prices quickly recover from new marginal lows. It's also curious to note that this development is occurring at its IPO price around 10.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

I was in Las Vegas this past week for a bunch of meetings and conferences. There was a lot going on in that city. There were traders and analysts at every hotel on the strip. It was really cool to see old friends and, of course, meet new ones. I personally found myself in a half dozen hotels arguing about markets and seeing a bunch of live music. Check out this video I shot at the Santana show at Mandalay Bay.

On Thursday afternoon I was hanging out at Bally's with David Keller talking about Stocks, Bonds, Gold, Copper, Sector Rotation, Market Breadth, Sentiment and the current market conditions. This one was short and sweet but we covered a lot:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Stabilization in European Financials has been a big part of our bull case as they're one of the largest sectors of the Stoxx Europe 600, our broad measure of European stocks, and many individual European countries.

The other aspect of it is risk appetite. If the worst of the worst sectors is catching a bid, then market participants are not likely pricing in the end of the world.

With that in mind, let's take a look at what we're seeing in the space right now and what it means for risk appetite.

Here are European Financials (EUFN) on an absolute basis. After confirming a failed breakdown and bullish momentum divergence by closing back above their December lows, prices rallied nearly 20%, but are now experiencing waning upside momentum.

When stocks are in strong uptrends, they tend to not only do well on an absolute basis, but they outperform their alternatives as well. Two obvious ones are Gold and Bonds.

So if stocks are going to fall hard, like so many people keep telling me, we are likely to see a bid in Precious Metals and US Treasury Bonds. As it turns out, however, we've only seen the exact opposite - bonds and metals struggling below overhead supply.

Back in August I made the case that if stocks were going much higher, as we thought they would, then the S&P500 will hold support at the late December lows relative to both Gold and Bonds. You can watch that short video here. This is what that chart looks like now: