The title of this trade plan is a modified take on a famous old floor traders saw. Basically, when experienced floor traders saw the entire pit screaming to hit the same bid or offer, the rule of thumb was to give 'em what they want. Take the other side and close your position when all those same lemmings try to hit the exits at the same time too.

It was the second easiest money on the floor (first was "trading against paper" --- which is you and me.)

The trade I'm putting on the board is a loose take on this idea. But instead of fading direction, we're going to fade the volatility premium priced into Gold options today.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

If you ask people what it would take for Small-Caps to begin outperforming you'll get a variety of answers. We need Financials to outperform. We need a weak US Dollar. We need a steeper yield curve. We need the moon to be in a waxing crescent. We need a miracle.

You'll have a lot of answers and a whole lot more confusion.

So in this post, we want to keep it simple and identify the two charts we're using to identify a sustainable turn in Small-Cap relative performance.

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?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Every week we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and give our outlook and some of the things we're watching for in the week ahead.

This week we're going to highlight our International ETF and Global Index tables, and focus on some of the rotation we're seeing into more offensive assets across the board. Let's dive into it.

Emerging Markets $EEM, particularly Latin America $ILF, continue to rebound strong. These two indexes were this week's leaders on our International ETF list but notice that they are also the top performers over the trailing one and three month periods.

Banks are the most important sector of the market so their performance, or lack thereof, gets our attention.

This week we're seeing some interesting headlines about industry heavyweights HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

Let's take a look at what's happening.

First, let's start with HDFC Bank, which continues to struggle with the 1,100 level of resistance on the daily and weekly chart. Notice how momentum also failed to reach overbought territory throughout its entire March-Present rally? Not exactly bullish action.

Click on chart to enlarge view. 

And here are some of the headlines we're seeing about the stock this week. Sold...to you?

The ASC team published a bunch of bullish ideas in the Pharma and Medical Devices spaces during our recent Monthly Conference Call.

After a pullback and a successful bounce off support, one of those names is setting up a great opportunity to get involved on the long side.

We continue to focus on stocks that are showing relative strength and absolute price momentum. This week we're looking sticking with a sector that continues to work, Pharma.

Last week we retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is our first edition, so let's jump right into it.

About a month ago we outlined the thesis that Reliance Industries had another 35% of upside ahead.

We're well on our way to that target and have been getting a lot of questions about the stock, so let's follow up and see what's happening.

The metals space sure has caught people's attention in recent weeks. We've seen some big moves in Gold and Silver and around the entire complex.

During the recent All Star Charts Monthly Conference call, we discussed our bullish stance on metals over the near term.

With that background, we've been watching a mining company who's stock is setting up nicely for a big move if the stars continue to align.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood." You can read more about the column here.

What we do is analyze the most popular Robinhood stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

This week we have a handful of trade ideas on the long side, many of which belong to the Health Care space and are working on Covid-19 vaccines.

We'll also walk through a number of mega-cap bellwethers and get a feel for what's going on in that space.

The stock market has been going crazy again this week, and maybe it's beginning to rub off on me... We usually only share about 10 charts in this post, but there is just too much going on in these names so I went a little crazy myself in looking through the charts for this week's post. We ended up with 14. Let's dive into it!

Here is this week's list of most popular stocks, measured by net increases in Robinhood accounts that hold shares.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Cryptocurrencies are back on our radar for the first time in a while...but we're not talking about Bitcoin, which remains stuck below a year of overhead supply.

Instead, our focus is on Ethereum, which is breaking out on an absolute and relative basis.

Let's get into it.