Back in April, we attempted to get long Texas Instruments $TXN, but the stock gapped higher at the open on our entry day and it didn't come back for a month. So we missed it. And that was a bummer. But sometimes, life (and markets) gives us a second chance. And here we are.

Let's not waste any more time. We're getting to work!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In early July we were looking at some divergences that were signaling a potential short-term bottom in US Interest Rates.

That thesis was quickly proven wrong as global yields pulled the US down with them, and last week in our Conference Call we discussed our current outlook for Bonds and their many intermarket relationships.

Earlier this week JC discussed the fact that Bonds are at an interesting level relative to the S&P 500 as well.

Yesterday I discussed some of the pitfalls to avoid when using Bond ETFs as a proxy for the underlying assets.

Needless to say, we've been talking a lot about Bonds.

In this post, I'm going to take a simplified look at price action and momentum of the 2, 5, 10, and 30-Year Treasuries to assess the reward/risk and if there's a short-...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday's Mystery Chart is one of my favorite charts right now, so thank you all for your feedback and participation.

Almost every one of you said you were selling the stock in question as it put in a failed breakout, while a handful of you were doing nothing and buying the subsequent breakout with me.

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

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This week I've seen a chart of High Yield relative to Investment Grade Bonds floating around with various conclusions, but I wanted to use this to highlight some things to consider when using Bond ETFs as a proxy for what's happening in the market it's meant to track.

While many stocks and indices are attempting to repair themselves from recent August volatility, the Energy sector continues to be mired in a year-long downtrend. And considering many of our current positions are leaning long, it is always good to have some counterbalancing positions in the portfolio. We've got a conservatively bearish play on deck to help accomplish this mission.

Assets in the strongest uptrends not only do well on an absolute basis, they tend to outperform relative to their alternatives as well. In the case of the S&P500, with new all-time highs last month, we've just seen lower highs relative to both Gold and US Treasury Bonds. This is NOT evidence of a strong uptrend.

The question today seems clear to me: Is the underperformance of stocks relative to other assets "The Divergence" that we'll point to in the future as the heads up that something was changing? Or will we get relative rotation back into equities and this was just a temporary blip while stocks consolidated their massive 2016-2017 gains?

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?

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about US Small-caps and the underperformance we've seen out of anything non-large-cap since 2018. We are now down to levels not seen since early 2016 when Small-caps started their outperformance vs Large-caps, which is where stocks bottomed after the 2015 cyclical bear market. Is this where the turn begins? Let's walk through it together and see if we can figure it out!

One area in the market that has been maintaining a pocket of strength is the Home Builders sector. And with the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates recently (with the possibility of more to come), it's likely mortgage originations will remain strong and therefore new home builds will continue their firm pace. Of course, to price-action watchers like us, all that fundamental and economic data is mostly noise...

Judging by the price action of the stocks in this space (the only indicator that really matters), it seems investors are betting on housing remaining a powerful economic driver into the near future. So, to ride this wave, we've identified a nice situation offering us great potential reward for limited risk.

Last week we wrote a post for our US subscribers to highlight several "big bases" that we are watching for potential breakouts.

The principles surrounding why we like "big bases" can be applied to Indian stocks as well, so we wanted to write a quick post outlining our logic and providing examples that may become actionable in the near future.

We saw some late week strength in US Stocks for two consecutive weeks. When buyers have had the opportunity to buy stocks on weakness, have they shown up to do so? I would argue yes.

That doesn't mean that we're not below overhead supply in most sectors and indexes. There are a few exceptions but let's get right into it and see what's going on.

Here is the video from my BNN Bloomberg interview this week. They asked me if I thought the media was making too big of a deal out of an inversion of the yield curve and I agreed that of course they did. That's what the media does, irresponsibly exaggerate things that don't need to be exaggerated at the expense of their audience. I'm happy to come on TV to bring some sense of reality to the conversation. Someone has to. In this video we discuss the ongoing Cyclical Bear Market in stocks and what we're waiting for to confirm that a new Cyclical Bull is getting started.