It is such an incredible blessing to have monthly candlestick charts of all the markets around the world at our disposal. It's essentially free data which is easily organized into a visual format to help us identify the direction of the underlying trends. It doesn't matter what your time horizon is, the monthly candlesticks offer a longer-term perspective from which to begin your analysis. From there is when you work your way down to more intermediate and shorter-term time horizons, but keeping the direction of the underlying primary trends in context.

I have a massive workbook of Monthly Candlestick charts that I review at the end of every month. I do not even open this workbook in the middle of the month. The fact that I only look at this workbook 12 times a year forces me to always come back to the primary trend, not allowing me to forget it. This exercise really helps me stay true and keeps me honest. It is easily one of the most valuable parts of my entire process.

These are some of the things that stood out to me the most:

Gail Dudack brings a unique perspective to markets, particularly compared to other guests we've had on Technical Analysis Radio. Gail's career goes back to the 1970s. She has served the Chief US Investment Strategist at UBS and Pershing prior to that. She was a rotating panelist on ‘Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser’ for over 20 years. As a past President of the CMT Association, I think her experience and approach to markets is one we can all learn from. In this episode Gail talks about how she incorporates the news cycle into her sentiment work along with other more quantitative inputs. Early in her career...

It's a busy time of the year for me. I've been given the opportunity to join a panel of amazing analysts at the 2nd annual Evidence-Based Investing Conference put on by my friends at Ritholtz Wealth Management. I will also be giving an hour long presentation at the Chicago Board of Trade on Technical Analysis and the Intermarket Relationships that I incorporate when making decisions about the current market environment. In a few weeks I will be presenting in San Leandro, CA at the Deaf Community Center and we'll have a sign language interpreter there to help us. This will be a lot of fun!

Here are all of the details. I hope you can join me for one or all of these!

I think a lot of people are asking the wrong question. To me, it's not whether or not Bitcoin is in a bubble? It's whether or not the bubble in Bitcoin already popped?

This is Bitcoin week at Allstarcharts. I didn't really intend for this to happen but the phone calls have flooded in lately asking for more technical analysis on the digital currencies (See Bitcoin and Ethereum Posts). It's given me an opportunity to talk to a lot of smart people about things I know little about. They are fascinated by the fact that I analyze bitcoin by using simple math. For me it's something I do every day for things like Microsoft, Apple, Soybean Futures, Euro/Yen, Gold and pretty much anything else that has enough liquidity. I analyze supply and demand. That's it.

One of the issues I have about this whole Bitcoin bubble thing is the irresponsible nature of the returns reporting. Any idiot can pick a starting point and say, well if you would have invested x amount of Dollars into...

The Nasdaq 30 is an equally-weighted index that I created which consists of the 30 largest stocks in the Nasdaq. Collectively these 30 companies represent over half of the entire market capitalization of the Nasdaq Composite. So just like the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a good gauge of stock market strength, I feel that my Nasdaq30 Index offers similar insight but for different types of companies.

Today we’re going to do a deep dive into these 30 Nasdaq stocks. As always I walk through them on both weekly and daily timefames. We want a longer-term structural perspective and then break things down to more tactical time horizon for execution purposes. Then we look at them collectively to weigh whether there is more good or more bad so we can make better, evidence-based decisions.

Here are a few things that stood out to me:

One of the great things about technical analysis is the ability to compare assets to one another so we can responsibly judge true value. If you bought some stock in March of 2009 and are thrilled by the fact that you made 30-40% on the investment since then, I'd say you failed. You could have almost bought anything else instead of what you decided to buy and made 200% or 300% during that time if not a lot more. On a relative basis you suck.

When it comes to measuring risk appetite I generally like to measure the more speculative asset to a more conservative risk-averse asset. Many of you who know me already see my Copper/Gold Ratio charts or Small-caps/Large-caps or Consumer Discretionary Stocks vs Consumer Staples. I have a lot of them. When it comes to precious metals specifically, I particularly like the Silver/Gold ratio as a measurement of risk appetite for precious metals. Historically, if metals are doing well, Silver is going to be outperforming Gold because it is the more speculative of the two. On the other hand, when precious metals are selling off, Silver gets destroyed while Gold outperforms the other metals....

Bitcoin seems to be the hot topic these days. I send out a couple of bitcoin charts and the twitterati goes wild. It's a quick tell that there is certainly interest. It was not quite like this before Bitcoin was able to exceed the 2013 highs. But once prices got going and all-time highs became a regular thing, the cults start to follow.

Contrary to popular belief, the price of Bitcoin hasn't just gone straight up. The cryptocurrency, in fact, has gone through a series of very symmetrical and well-defined corrections along the way. Today we're taking a look at Bitcoin from multiple time horizons to get both long-term and short-term perspective using our Fibonacci tools.

Dr. Phil Pearlman is a stock market psychologist who I have turned to for help and guidance throughout a large portion of my career. In this episode we dive deep into cognitive behavior and discuss some solutions to flaws in the behavior of investors. Phil discusses exposure therapy for traders in a similar way that PTSD patients are treated. Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market and market participants. The more we learn about ourselves and the way we are trained to think emotionally, the more aware we will be as we enter and exit the public marketplace. I asked Phil to give us his take on Bitcoin, Stock Market Volatility and Precious Metals. This conversation is one I recommend going back to on regular basis to remind ourselves to be more in tune with what we're thinking and why we're thinking it.

Every Fall for the past 7 years I've gone to beautiful Coronado, CA for the annual Stocktoberfest conference put on by Stocktwits. Sometimes they even let me get up and show off some of my favorite charts. They know that I rip through thousands of charts a week and I could literally be up on that stage all day talking about markets from all over the world. So this year they limited me to 15 charts in 15 minutes. Let's just say I cheated a little and brought a few more :)

This year's Stocktoberfest was different than the others. Rather than selling tickets, they just invited about 100 investors, analysts, members of the media and VCs to have some fun and share ideas. I liked that it was less formal than other years. It was cool. They did a really nice job.

Larry McDonald is not only one of my favorite authors and analysts, but also one of my favorite people. His perspective on markets, sentiment and investor behavior is like no other. Larry is the author of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers. It is a must read for any investor. While he tends to focus more on the Bond Market and Interest Rates, he incorporates an intermarket approach that includes currencies, equities and commodities. While this is a podcast specifically about Technical Analysis, I think Larry brings in a political and economic point-of-view to the behavior of markets, but ties it all together with the study of price. This conversation was a real treat for me personally. I think you'll get a lot from this one!

We don't have to complicate things. It's very simple. If there is actual risk appetite for precious metals, then Silver would be outperforming Gold, not the other way around. The Gold Bugs have little to say at this point, so some of them irresponsibly cherry-pick year-to-date returns to pretend Gold is in an uptrend. Some of them do it out ignorance while others need help selling whatever product preys on the poor souls who believe their conspiracy theories and end of world stories. There's a huge market for that kind of stuff. But for the rest of us who are humbly just trying to turn a profit in the market by managing risk responsibly, we need to look at things objectively.

Today we are taking a look at one of my favorite gauges of risk appetite vs risk aversion for one of the most important asset classes in the world: Gold. We're in a current market environment where stocks are making all-time highs. We're not just talking about U.S. Stocks, but all over the world. Meanwhile, Gold would need to rally 50% from current levels just to get back to where it was in 2011. Silver would need to rally 190% just to get back to those former highs. And these clowns have the...