I'm sure by now you've had the time to digest the never ending headlines about an 8-year anniversary of a bull market for the S&P500. The problem with all of them is that the S&P500 has NOT been in a bull market for 8 years. In fact, there is a very strong argument to make that it could have just hit its one-year anniversary. Also, let's remember the motivations of the people who are suggesting that the S&P500 is entering the 9th year of a single bull market. In a majority of cases they are purposely misleading you for personal gain.

It's important to identify that the one single reason these people are using is actually a small technicality that they are irresponsibly pointing out and choosing to isolate as the sole basis for this conclusion. The single reason they are using to suggest that the S&P500 is entering its 9th year of a bull market is because in 2011 the S&P500 fell only 19.38% from peak to trough on a closing basis and not 20%. Again, let me stress that this is the ONLY data point they are using to claim we are in an 8-year bull market. And to make matters worse, their reasoning is because it fell 19.38...

Emerging markets have been a real laggard. While developed markets around the world have been making new highs, it’s just now that emerging markets are catching up. This week the MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund $EEM broke out to the highest level since the summer of 2015. This comes after 7 months of sideways consolidation:

It's hard to ignore certain market moves that tend to be very rare. Bullish outside days that engulf the prior period are one of those. I think this is exactly what we saw this week in the AMEX Arline Index and it is something we want to respect. This is especially the case if you consider where this bullish reversal took place, just below important support.

Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.

This week I laid out a list of bullish characteristics for stocks and my list of bearish characteristics in the current market environment. The reason for this exercise is to weigh the evidence and see which way the scale tilts. In this month's call, we'll dive deeper into the leading sectors and really identify the signs we'll be watching for to signal further deterioration in stocks, not just in the U.S. but globally.

We have a lot to discuss! It will be held on Tuesday March 21st at 7PM ET. Here are the Registration Details:

Remember, it's not about being right, it's about making money. Is it nice to be right? Of course. But it's even nicer to be profitable. In order to do so, we focus more attention on figuring out where we're wrong rather than allocating time and resources to fascinating about potential profits. If you want to be on my team, we're going to play defense. So when we set specific parameters to be long against, we stay disciplined and move on to other opportunities when need be. If you use stop losses, it's about executing them and then looking elsewhere. If your options expire worthless, just know you limited your loss to the premium you paid. The priority is always on the risk management, not on dreaming about future profits. I encourage everyone to read this post from last year: Knowing Where To Get Out Before Getting In

In today's market environment I think it's even more important to reiterate this point. Last week I mentioned that if we started to see cracks in certain levels for specific assets, then a more cautious stance is appropriate for stocks. Well, over the last few days, we've started to see that...

Intermarket Analysis is a fantastic tool that is available to us as technicians regardless of our time horizon. Certain gauges of risk appetite, or risk aversion, can be seen simultaneously throughout various asset classes. We use these correlations as confirmations or divergences from data we're getting elsewhere. Today I want to focus on the direction of the U.S. Interest Rate Market and compare it to the data we're getting from Regional Bank Stocks and Real Estate Investment Trusts. The relationship between Banks and REITs is similar to the tug of war going on between investors in the Bond Market. 

Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market and market participants. We try and identify the direction of the primary trend and invest accordingly. As Technicians we can apply our price-focused approach to any market, whether it's stocks, commodities, currencies or even Bitcoin. If it is liquid and driven by the supply and demand dynamics in that particular market, then applying our methods of price analysis makes perfect sense and it works very well.

I jumped on board the Bitcoin train last year and added it to my Research Platform. Our clients really enjoy it, whether they are actively trading it or just interested in the product. To be honest, one of the biggest reasons why I decided to start including it in my weekly analysis is because I saw an opportunity to profit from this market. At the end of the day, isn't that why all of us are looking at these charts in the first place, Bitcoin or otherwise?  

For me it's not just about buying a group of stocks, but about buying the strongest members of that group. I am a firm believer that by erring on the long side of relative strength or erring on the short side of relative weakness, the odds of a continuation in trend is much greater than the odds of a reversal. Therefore, there is a higher probability of success by following trend, rather than trying to fight trends. So today I want to talk about how we're going to take this top/down approach and apply it to find profitable trades this month in Energy stocks. 

Hey guys, I could really use your help with this. I'm trying to a consensus answer on the list of the 10 most important liquid assets on earth. I've given this a lot of thought and have come up with mine. But I want to know what you think. I'll post the poll results at the end of the week. Here is my list in no particular order:

I'm lucky that I get a chance to read a lot and converse with really smart market participants all the time. So there are many lessons that I've gotten to learn the easy way, from my predecessors and colleagues. But there are some lessons that damn it you just need to learn on your own. For me one of those lessons was trading stocks near flat 200 day moving averages. And when I say "stock", this can refer to an ETF, Commodity Futures, Index, etc. But when they're near their directionless longer-term smoothing mechanism, you're begging for trouble. If you like headaches, trade stocks near flat 200 day moving averages.