You guys who know me already know that this is my favorite exercise of them all. We only do this 12 times a year. Let's just say that it takes you an hour, if you really want to take your time, that's 12 hours of your entire year. Think about the amount of time you spend each year performing other analysis. As far as I'm concerned, it's not even close. These 6 hours (for me it's 6) are easily the most valuable 6 hours I spend all year analyzing markets.

This process allows us to take a step back, which forces us to identify the direction of the primary trend. It's impossible not to, especially when you're seeing similar themes across Indexes, sectors and asset classes.

Here's what stands out from this month's review:

This is the video recording of the February 2019 Conference Call for Members of All Star Options

With every month comes a new set of monthly charts, so I want to use this post to step back and point out the major changes since the last time we looked at them in November.

As I was updating our Monthly Chartbook today for members, one theme that stuck out clear as day is that there are really two separate markets in Indian Stocks right now.

Tuesday I posted a mystery chart and asked you all to let me know what you would do. Buy, sell, or do nothing. Most of you agreed with me it looked like a structural breakdown that we should be selling as long as prices are below support.

So today I want to reveal the full chart and share why I feel it's relevant.

We saw this tweet from our friend Josh and we totally agreed:

this move in REITs is slapstick comedy pic.twitter.com/6wtROUYeB9

— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) January 31, 2019

This move in $IYR (iShares US Real Estate ETF) is incredible, and we might go higher from here still. But I'm willing to bet a mild retracement will soon be at hand -- or at the very least we'll see a pause.

As the calendar turns to February, it is time to review our handful of open positions with Feb options that are nearing expiration and might require some attention.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Short-term strength in Precious Metals continues, so I want to do an in-depth analysis of the space like I did last August to see if we're now entering "The Golden Age of Precious Metals".

One chart that I think sums up how I feel about Precious Metals is an equally-weighted index of Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium. While no longer in a long-term downtrend, it's not in an uptrend either. All that can be said is that it's testing the top of a multi-year range. Not all that exciting.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Coming into the year, the most important chart I was watching was the US Dollar. As far as risk appetite was concerned, I felt the Dollar would be a great tell. The way I saw it, the Dollar rallied throughout 2018 to achieve its upside objective and then broke the uptrend line from those former lows. If we were to just rip through those key levels without at least some kind of pause or consolidation, it would most likely be because of a tremendous flight to safety. Stocks would probably be doing poorly under those conditions.

But flip that thesis upside down, and a weaker Dollar would most likely mean strength in stocks. This is exactly what we've seen throughout January = A weaker Dollar and higher stock prices:

Sticking with a theme we started the week with, if the market is poised for higher prices, they will likely be led by the Medical Devices space. Putting our money where our mouths are, we're taking a shot that will be a home run if it plays out, while offering us room to be wrong without losing too much.

This week we're back with another Mystery Chart.

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and eliminate the x and y-axes and and all labels eliminated to minimize bias. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. It can even be inverted or a custom index.

The point here is to not guess what it is, but instead to think about what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

For me, price is the most important technical indicator. Everything after that is just a supplement to actual price behavior. In that group of supplements is Momentum. My oscillator of choice is the RSI, or the "Relative Strength Index". I use this indicator in a variety of ways, but today I wanted to show you an easy trick to quickly identify whether momentum is in a bullish range or a bearish range: