This has already been a market environment the past few weeks where we've wanted to be selling Emerging Markets. But today we're getting more specific into Latin America and shorting Mecradolibre $MELI.

Remember, like every other stock we discuss, 95% of the reasons why we're choosing this stock has nothing to do with the chart of the stock itself. It's the other 4,999 charts we look at every week that collectively point to buying or selling a particular security. In this case, we're already sellers of Emerging Markets. The data suggests Latin America is one of the weaker links within EM, and $MELI just provides a clean risk vs reward to express this thesis.

Here is the chart showing Mecradolibre failing once again near this 677 level that has been trouble since last year. There is clearly still an overwhelming amount of supply here. The bet is that $MELI gets back down to 517, which would put it near the lower end of this multi-year range:

This week I sat down with Irusha Peiris of Investor's Business Daily to talk markets and life lessons.

I was invited on to the Investing with IBD Podcast where we discussed the current market environment, including US and International equities. We talked about interest rates and their intermarket relationships with other asset classes like currencies and commodities. Most importantly, in my opinion, I lay out 4 very critical levels, in 4 indexes specifically, that I think will be the biggest hurdles to jump over in order for stocks to continue higher.

This was a fun conversation.

Here's the interview in full:

The trend for emerging markets outperformance is down. It's very much down.

We caught a nice rally in EM last year on absolute terms, but we’ve wanted to be selling those stocks for a few weeks now.

I'm in the process of preparing for our Live Monthly Conference Call this Monday evening. Going through all of the data, this is one chart that definitely stands out.

Emerging Markets are hitting the lowest levels relative to the S&P500 since 2003! 

These are the registration details for the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

There is a lot going on in the market right now, not just in the U.S. but globally. The intermarket relationships between Bonds, Gold and the US Dollar are having a major impact on equities.

January is a month that gives us a lot more information than most other months throughout the year. We have the data now that we can use to help us identify primary trends.

Volatility is picking up. Daily swings are getting larger. I've seen this story before.

We'll discuss all of this and a lot more on Monday evening.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Monday February 10th at 7PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with all of the other calls since 2015.

Here are the details for the call:

It's been an interesting couple of weeks, eh? Tesla put on a show, Coronavirus, we've gotten a little two-sided action in the broader markets, and volatility reminded us it still exists. But as we know, volatility fades. And right now, there is some elevated premium levels too tempting to ignore. So we're selling some premium here.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

We often get questions about what levels we're watching or what our stop is, but in truth every market participant has different timeframes, objectives, and plans for how they'll manage their portfolios. It's impossible to answer properly without knowing all of that information.

With that being said, any market participant can identify various levels at which the dynamics of the asset they're trading have changed.

Today I want to walk through an example using the Japan ETF (EWJ) showing how we'd go about identifying those changes through price action and momentum.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Thank you to everyone who responded to this week's mystery chart.

Most respondents were waiting for more information before getting long or short but did agree that the trend had shifted to sideways.

With that as our backdrop, let's take a look at this week's chart.

On this episode of the podcast I'm really excited to bring in Quantitative Researcher Chris Cain. Chris found his love for building trading systems while he was a market maker in the bond market for over 10 years. Today he works with Larry Connors and just published a book called The Alpha Formula that you can purchase at a discounted price at Tradingmarkets.com. (Use the Promo Code: "TAF2020" to get the book at half price!) We laugh during the podcast that Chris is so hardcore about this stuff the he actually teaches a course in Python specifically for traders and building strategies. His goal with these systems is to recognize and take advantage of our human behavior flaws so we go over a bunch of those, which I always think is helpful. He also walks through one of the 4 models and explains how having several uncorrelated strategies increases risk adjusted...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In this post we're talking about Orange Juice, which may not quench your thirst so stick around to the end for another great bonus chart.

Let's get into it.

We don't have bull markets in America without Financials participating. That's just how it is around here.

I look through a lot of charts, as you guys know, and there are always a few that really stand out and explain the current situation. I've pointed out how there is further potential of overhead supply for stocks at these levels, particularly internationally. That means that, for the most part, the market has proven that there are more willing sellers than buyers around here. You can't see it if you're just looking at S&Ps and the Dow. But when you go sector by sector and country by country, trust me, it's there.

So bringing it back to America, Financials are in quite the predicament. You can't have a success story without an original struggle right? Well this $31 level has been an issue since the epic top in 2007 before the financial crisis:

This is the video recording of the February 2020 Conference Call for Members of All Star Options

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it's a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?