From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Momentum and breadth diverged slightly in the major indices and many global markets, leading to a short-term bounce that's been sold into so far. Today I want to look at sector breadth to highlight the extent of the weakness under the surface and outline what we're watching for if/when prices retest their late October, and potentially Q1 lows.

I learned a long time ago from one of my early mentors, "Don't Fight Papa Dow". In other words, this is the most important index in the world. When someone asks you what the market did today, they're wondering how the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed for the session. Some people would argue that the S&P500 is more important because it represents 500 stocks, rather than just 30 from in the Dow Industrials. But by that logic, the Russell3000 should be most important because it represents 98% of all investable assets in the U.S. equities market, and contains 3000 stocks. But most non-professionals don't even know the Russell3000 exists. Also, if you overlay the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the S&P500, they move together.

If you get the Dow right, you're likely to get the direction of S&Ps right as well:

I'm in Chicago this week trying to sit down and chat with the smartest people I know in this city. I love the town, but man is it cold!

There are assets out there that have a lower or no correlation with the rest of the U.S. Stock Market. These investments are really helpful, but even more so when we're looking for stocks to buy in an environment where we think most stocks keep falling in price. One of these less correlated areas is the Uranium space.

Investors in Uranium stocks over the past 7 years have been some of the worst stock market investors in the world during that period. Think about this, Uranium investors have performed even worse since 2011 than gold and silver investors! That is saying a lot. We've already been buying precious metals stocks the past couple of months so it seems like rotation into the worst of the worst areas is happening in unison.

First of all, here is the Uranium Futures chart breaking out from the downtrend it has been in since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 that marked the top in the space:

Click On Charts To Zoom In

There's something fishy going on in Interest Rates and the U.S. Bond market right now. We've been bearish bonds and constructive about higher interest rates for as long as I can remember. This has worked out well. It was a big part of the bullish stocks thesis and it's played out. Bonds are at lows and rates are at highs. I just don't think it will be as easy for this to continue, particularly with what we're seeing from both a sentiment and intermarket perspective.

Here's what's got me thinking differently:

The market is a beautiful thing. We have uptrends and we have downtrends. We weigh the evidence regularly to determine which one of these we’re in, or if it's a sideways trend. Our approach to the market has to depend on the market environment we have. In other words, we have to play the cards we're dealt, not the cards we might want. So we first determine how we want to approach the market, and then we decide which vehicles would be the best way to express that thesis.

Here are a list short ideas that I think present favorable risk vs reward opportunities:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Over the weekend I ran the performance metrics of the Russell 3000's Sectors and Industries to get some perspective on where the leadership is since the S&P 500's high on October 3rd and year-to-date. In this post I just want to share this table and talk about some of the themes I see.

The big question coming into this wasn't whether or not we wanted to be sellers of stocks, but how low could stocks go? The point I tried to make was that they could go a lot lower than any of us think. I've been around too long and have seen too much to be surprised by anything anymore. So if the risk is skewed to the downside, in theory there is unlimited risk. Whether there is or there isn't, is not the point. The fact alone that we're even talking about it has been reason enough to not be long this market.

When looking below trying to figure out how low we can go, I can draw all sorts of Fibonacci retracement levels and horizontal lines of all colors, but the truth is that the market doesn't care about JC's lines. Forced selling sparked by margin calls and hedge funds blowing up causes prices to blow through any "levels" all the time. Remember, when we identify specific prices, they are just levels of interest, not necessarily support levels. We won't know if they were actually support until well after the fact.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Marijuana stocks have never been that HIGH on our list of areas to look at given their smaller market-cap, average trading volume, and short price history often inhibits larger players from participating in them, however, the strong performance as of late has drum up interest in the space and increased the number of stocks that meet our criteria to analyze them. This post will be a quick update on what we're seeing from a price perspective.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In July I looked at the trend and momentum readings of stock markets around the world and US Sectors and Sub-Sectors to identify the overall risk appetite for Equities. Today's update will perform the same exercise and compare the results to determine if breadth has improved, deteriorated, or stayed the same, as well as what the implications of these changes are.

This is the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Wednesday October 17th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call: