Before we start again with Season 2 of the Allstarcharts Interviews, I wanted to introduce you to our new Chief Options Strategist at Allstarcharts.com - options wizard Sean McLaughlin! Many of you already know him as @chicagosean. When it comes to the Greeks, this is the guy you want on your side, so we're lucky to have him. In this podcast episode, Sean and I talk about Trading, Social Media, Taking Vacations, Books to Read and of course, Options! This was a fun conversation to have and I think there are a lot of pieces of value to take away from this one.
You have two options as an investor: you could listen to the media or you could listen to the market. They've been pushing the notion lately that only a handful of Tech stocks are leading the way for the market, suggesting a weakening breadth environment. In the real world, however, we are participating in a united rally among Tech stocks as a group.
In fact, the Equally-Weighted Technology Index went out just 0.4% away from another all-time weekly closing high, just shy of it's record high set last month. This is the Equally-Weighted Index, not the Cap-weighted index that the bears are suggesting is pointing to weakening breadth because the big names are such a large portion. If it was true that only a handful of names are going up and market breadth is deteriorating, the Equally-weighted index, which takes the extra-large market capitalization stocks completely out of the equation, would not be behaving this way.
I love getting questions from our subscribers to All Star Options. It shows they are engaged and eager to learn or to get clarification as they learn our processes. We get questions every day. Here's one I received recently that I thought held a lesson we could all benefit from:
Some people look at Utility stocks doing well as something negative. I never understood that. They suggest that an uptrend in a sector that is looked upon as "defensive" is not something characteristic of a stock market that is going up. But, in fact, it is. With Utilities pressing against all-time highs again, now is as good of a time as any to remind ourselves that they indeed move with the overall stock market over time.
I just got back from a vacation in the south of France and northern Italy. I've written in the past about the benefits of getting away and the positive impact it can have on decision making and portfolio returns. If you have the discipline to stay away from your computer during a staycation, that works too. I personally cannot help myself but to go check out some charts if I know I have access to the computer. So I need to get out of town. This year we chose Europe.
Ever since first studying Fibonacci in 2005, I knew his statue was somewhere in Pisa. The trouble was finding it. There isn't much information out there. Some of you have been asking me about this for your upcoming trip to Italy or just keeping note of it for the future. So I figured it would help to just lay it out there as a reference for when you need it.
This is Part 2 of the 3rd Quarter Playbook for Members of Allstarcharts.com and focuses more on the Global Macro and Intermarket composition of the current environment. For more US Sector and Stock specific analysis, see Part 1.
Next week I will be sending out our Q3 playbook. Email me if you're not already a Premium Member. There are so many interesting things happening right now that I think there will be plenty of opportunities to make money next quarter, despite it supposedly being a slower time of the year.
When months close at 4PM ET, I can't help myself but hit those monthly charts right away. I am very disciplined about never looking at them before the month is completed. You get into bad habits like that. So I look forward to the monthly candlesticks being done:
Last week, Tom Bruni penned a post titled Global ETF Carnage Continues, highlighting how ETFs representing stock markets around the world have been getting hurt by US Dollar strength. While he isn't yet calling a bottom, there was one particular Latin American ETF that was beginning to show signs of bottoming and it is a scenario he'd like to see replicated in more global ETFs to give him confidence the turn is coming.
The best way I know how to stay engaged in this possible turn is to have some skin in the game.
As a result of the labor intensive process needed to maintain the Chartbook Notes and their lack of use by the majority of members, we have decided to discontinue this feature. We will be adding new tools and functionality to replace it by the end of the quarter. In the meantime if any of the charts in the Chartbook are unclear and you need further clarification, please feel free to contact us and we'll get back to you within 24 hours. Thank you in advance for your patience as we make these improvements to the site.
Over the last few weeks we've been making several changes to the site and will be adding more stuff over the coming weeks based on your feedback. One of the changes we've made is the notes in our Chartbooks. We've received several questions on how to interpret them, so today I want to use this post to quickly walk you through just that.
If you're like me, you think ATM charges are a crime. And one of the worst offenders is Chase, part of JP Morgan's umbrella. It's time we make them pay us back for all the ATM fees they've stolen from us for the privilege of having access to OUR money.
It just so happens, I see a great opportunity shaping up to make some high probability cash flow to replenish our bank account balances.
AMD has had a tremendous run off this April's lows, where it bottomed out around $9.00. Today, it's trading north of $16. That's a greater than 75% move in about 11 weeks. Wow.
But we have some very important technical and supply-and-demand reasons to believe the move might only just be getting underway. And we want to participate, but limit our risk in doing so.
