Eyes are on the Gold Market. All-time highs do a great job of getting everyone's attention, especially if it hasn't happened in a while. We're going on almost a decade since precious metals hit their peak and completely collapsed. As bad as Gold did, Silver really got destroyed. To put things in perspective, from the March 2020 lows, it will take a 328% rally in Silver just to get back to where it was in 2011. 

Today, let's focus on Gold. Are we going to make all-time highs? What is the all-time high? Do we look at weekly charts, monthly charts, daily charts? What actually is "The All-time High in Gold?".

First, let's keep in mind that this conversation would not even be necessary if we priced Gold in any other currency outside of the US Dollar. The Dollar strength, which is the denominator in this Gold conversation, has held it back, compared to what it's done priced in other denominations.

Look at this table showing all of them already making new highs:

Yesterday's post on "Pulling The Weeds" from our portfolios got some great feedback, so thank you for that.

It also prompted a question about whether we should be adding Equity exposure as the indexes go higher or if we should be lightening up and trying to add back on weakness.

This is a very personal question that'll look different for everyone in practice. In this post, I want to provide a framework to use when thinking about this so you can identify what's most appropriate for your portfolio.

Remember, our job as Market Technicians is to ask the right questions and then allow the market to tell us the answer.

Believe it or not, there's a "tech" stock out there that is ripe for a short trade.

I know, I know.... shocking. I was surprised too.

And it's offering a nice bounce to sell into today, so let's get to it!

Our view remains that this is a new bull market in stocks, so we want to continue using any weakness towards 10,000 in the Nifty 50 to be adding exposure. With that said, just as we would pull the weeds out of our garden periodically to keep it healthy, we want to do the same with our portfolios.

And what better time to review your portfolio than at the end of the quarter?

In this post, we're going to show a few examples of stocks that remain out of favor...and their characteristics, so that you can identify any of the weeds in your portfolio and determine the best course of action for them.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 The Money Game, Phil wanted to talk about the importance of exercise. He compares the human mind and body to auto racing and how in order to succeed, the car must be in great condition. For Financial Advisors, Traders, Portfolio Managers and Analysts, we regularly go through very stressful times, and in other cases very boring times. In order to put ourselves in a position to excel, we need to have our minds right. The best way to make sure the mind is in top working order, is to make sure the body isn't being ignored. They work together.

Phil reiterates a lot of points that are probably familiar to a lot of us who focus on physical and mental health, which is fantastic. But for those of you looking for a spark, just to get the ball rolling, Phil offers some advice on easy ways to get started. He also discusses the Height-to-Waste Ratio and what we should be looking for. I thought that was really helpful too.

Last month I shared a video of my Happy Hour with Traders Kimmy Sokoloff and Joe Fahmy. You guys sent in amazing feedback and I really enjoyed doing it. So today, I want to give you a peak at my conversation with Andrew Thrasher and Dan Russo. They both love drinking wine and we've always had that in common, so we discussed some of our favorites as well as our thoughts on the stock market and bond market.

It's cool to be able to sit back and relax with two of the smartest guys out there and hear what they have to say. I hope you enjoy!

A recent favorite among Robinhood traders, Facebook $FB is consolidating near all time highs and put in a clearly defined risk management level last week that gives us a great level to lean against on the long side:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Thursday, July 2, 2020:

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

Being Independence Day weekend, we're going to highlight the continued structural outperformance from the US vs rest of the world in this week's post. As a good patriot and technician, I would be remiss not to take this opportunity to reflect on how grateful US investors should be.

Here are our US Index ETF and Global Index tables.

About a month ago we outlined that the US Dollar was at key support relative to a basket of Emerging Market Currencies, one of which is the Indian Rupee, and that its upward trend was likely to continue.

After some brief strength following this post, we're seeing the US Dollar continue to weaken...which raises the question of whether it's losing its leadership position against the world's major currencies.

I've learned a lot of things and met some amazing people during my trips to India over the years. One of them is the original meaning of the word "Guru".

You see, in America it definitely has a negative connotation. Most people I speak to don't even know what "guru" actually means. For us, it's usually a charlatan-type that no one likes. They usually know less than most and typically do much more harm to their audience than good. You'll often see them buying twitter followers and spamming your LinkedIn messages.

In marketing parlance, they refer to the "Guru" as the guy (usually male) who they spend all their time on marketing and making them look good. The better and smarter the “guru” appears to be, the more money that comes in, and the more profits for the marketing company, regardless of how completely full of it they actually are.

In America, whenever you hear, "Financial Guru", usually you want to run away as fast as possible.

I find myself on Zoom calls all the time. How about you?

Did you notice that the Communications Index is pushing up against new all-time highs? Did you notice that during the March decline, communications held above their late 2018 lows?

I think all of this points to us paying a little more attention to what's going on in the space.

First of all, check out the Communications Services Index holding above former resistance the past 2 years. That alone is impressive. If we're above 272, there is no reason to be pessimistic about Communications Stocks: