Every 2 weeks I sit down with the good folks at Benzinga to chat about the markets on their morning radio show. Today we went over specific trades that have zero correlation with the S&P500 and Nasdaq100, which are both stuck in a short-term sideways range. The S&P500 has done nothing for 2 months and the Nasdaq100 has done nothing for 3 months. These consolidations come within the context of longer-term bear markets so we would rather look elsewhere for money making opportunities. We discuss precious metals, Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Japanese Yen and some individual stock ideas.
On April 5th 2016, I finally got on board and initiated coverage of Bitcoin. For years, readers had been pressing me to analyze the price behavior of Bitcoin, but I never felt it was a big enough/liquid enough market. After a healthy consolidation since the 4th quarter last year, I said, "If we break out from this base, we could see a monster rally towards $700".
That was enough for me and I put out an announcement in early April that we were initiating coverage of Bitcoin priced in U.S. Dollars from both short-term and longer-term perspectives. Sure enough, just a couple of weeks after we initiated coverage, prices broke out as we had hoped and it has been a screaming buy ever since. Members of All Star Charts have been receiving weekly updates since then and have benefited tremendously over a very short period of time. This weekend, Bitcoin hit our tactical upside target netting a 58% return in less than 2 months. But this doesn't mean that the trade is over. To the contrary, I think there are still plenty of opportunities in this space.
When we talk about "the stock market", some people are referring to the S&P500 or maybe the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But these are just 2 large-cap indexes in one country in the entire world. Cliché or not, this isn't a stock market, it is a "market of stocks". These come in all different sizes and countries around the world to collectively make up a "stock market".
It's interesting to compare markets around the world to each other to get an idea of where the relative strength lies and where the weakness might be. Today we're taking a look at the S&P500 in the U.S. vs the Nikkei in Japan and the EuroStoxx50 in Europe.
I analyze the behavior of the market and market participants. I do this every day and have been doing this professionally for well over a decade. In 2008 I earned my Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation and founded Allstarcharts.com in 2010. What started as just a humble blog has turned into one of the fastest growing technical analysis research platforms in the world. The platform is jam packed with actionable trade ideas and analysis, but I recognize this can be overwhelming at times. That's why I'm writing this post - to help our newer members take full advantage of all that the platform has to offer in a short period of time.
This weekend I took advantage of some time off to go over every single chart that I follow from all over the world. These include U.S. Stocks, Sectors and Indexes, International Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets. There are many people complaining about the uncertainty in the current market environment. But I would argue that there is always uncertainty in the market and today is no different.
Last week I shared a chart with you guys where I purposely left out the ticker symbol and y axis. The reason I post these mystery charts every now and then is to eliminate any biases that we all have in these markets. This allows us to approach a market and focus only on the supply and demand dynamics in order to forget everything else.
The most recent Mystery Chart was the U.S. 10-year Note Yield upside down. Here is the actual chart where you can see yields approaching the apex of these two converging trendlines:
Every now and then I throw out a mystery chart just to get us thinking. Not knowing what a chart represents helps eliminate biases and any ideas we may already have in our heads. Today we are looking at what I think is one of the more interesting developments in the market today.
This is a chart that has been in an uptrend for many years. After about 4 years of consolidation, prices appear to be breaking out above the upper of these two converging trendlines.
