Larry McDonald is the guy I turn to when I want to talk about the Bond Market. He always has something insightful about what's happening that I'm probably not seeing. We've become friends over the years but I originally got to know who Larry was by reading his book, Colossal Failure of Common Sense. This is a book about the collapse of Lehman Brothers being told by a bond trader inside the firm. I encourage you to pick it up and give it a read. It will give you good insight as to what exactly was taking place at the time. In this podcast Larry tells us a good story about the day his team had the most profitable day in the history of the bond desk at Lehman and Dick Fuld didn't even bother to come down and say hi.

The risks associated with owning stocks are currently elevated.

There are a lot of things I can say, levels I can point out, possible outcomes I can walk you through, all those things. But the one common denominator between all of those is that the risk in owning stocks is currently higher than it normally is.

This is an important time to remember your original investment objectives, time horizon and risk parameters. Before buying a stock, or entering any investment for that matter, these 3 questions need to be answered. I can't answer them for you. But what I can do is show you what we're seeing from an intermediate-term horizon.

Our goals here are to make money this quarter. We care about the coming weeks and months. It doesn't matter to us what the market does next year, and it doesn't matter what it does today. Weeks and Months. That's our focus.

Over the past month, Bonds are up a bunch as the collapse in Interest Rates has resumed. We jumped on board this bond trade last month and so far it's working.

Meanwhile, a majority of U.S. stocks are actually down over the past month. While the S&P500, Dow Industrials and Nasdaq100 have gone on to make new highs, the NYSE Advance-Decline line (stocks only) did not, Small-caps did not, Dow Transports did not, and a majority of individual stocks did not. It's only a minority of names doing the work, particularly large-cap stocks and some higher dividend paying areas like REITs and Utilities.

When you run the numbers, most stocks in the U.S. are down over the past month, with negative average and median returns for the Russell3000 components. It's the bonds that are up and I think they're just getting started.

As you guys know, we've had a much more defensive approach to the stock market over the past few weeks, especially compared to how bullish we had been for so long. There is a time to be big and aggressive and a time to be small and cash heavy. I believe we're currently in the latter of those two categories.

Here's the clip in full:

There is a lot going on in the market right now, not just in the U.S. but globally. The intermarket relationships between Bonds, Gold and the US Dollar are having a major impact on equities.

January is a month that gives us a lot more information than most other months throughout the year. We have the data now that we can use to help us identify primary trends.

Volatility is picking up. Daily swings are getting larger. I’ve seen this story before.

We discuss all of this and a lot more.

This is the video recording of the February 2020 Conference Call.

*NOTE: This Post and Video was originally intended for Premium Members of Allstarcharts Only. But due to the circumstances, we have unlocked it for everyone to watch and download the slides. We feel this can be used for educational purposes moving forward. Thank you for understanding.

This week I sat down with Irusha Peiris of Investor's Business Daily to talk markets and life lessons.

I was invited on to the Investing with IBD Podcast where we discussed the current market environment, including US and International equities. We talked about interest rates and their intermarket relationships with other asset classes like currencies and commodities. Most importantly, in my opinion, I lay out 4 very critical levels, in 4 indexes specifically, that I think will be the biggest hurdles to jump over in order for stocks to continue higher.

This was a fun conversation.

Here's the interview in full:

Today I have a group of charts that I think will help me explain my thought process here. We're keeping this very simple.

Let's go!

The first thing that stands out is the breakout to new all-time highs for the Dow Jones Industrial Average that has not yet been confirmed by the Dow Jones Transportation Average. This rejection in January and failure to exceed those former highs is worrisome. If this market was as strong as some of the other indicators have/had been pointing to, then we should have seen a breakout by now. Here is the Dow Jones Industrial Avg:

Click on Charts to Zoom in

And here is the Dow Jones Transportation Average getting rejected hard last month:

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I discuss all the reasons why we're buying bonds right now instead of stocks and commodities. The big point here for me is that it's not just one chart. There is no single holy grail suggesting we buy bonds. This is a weight of the evidence conclusion. It's not one chart, it's hundreds of them all pointing to the exact same thing: Sell stocks and Buy bonds!

I can't believe I'm publishing the 100th Episode of this podcast that I started in the summer of 2017. My first guest ever was Ralph Acampora! I mean, how could it not be right? Since then I've had the privilege of interviewing Portfolio Managers, Traders, Analysts, Best Selling Authors and even a World Series of Poker Champion! People all over the world have approached me how much they've learned from listening to the podcasts. It's been an amazing experience for me all around.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

My big question coming into this weekend was what should we make of the action in Utilities lately and what does it mean for Bonds?

Utilities are making new all-time highs on an absolute basis, posing this question on Twitter: "So is the breakout in Utilities to new all-time highs a signal that a Bond breakout is coming, or is it simply a bi-product of overwhelming demand for Equities?

This got a lot of attention and responses, so I thought it'd be worthwhile to quickly outline what I'm watching in Utilities and the Bond market over the next few weeks.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In late August we started to see some signs of a potential bottom forming in Commodities as they approached long-term support with momentum diverging and in October we finally got a breakout.

Today that breakout in the Thomson Reuters CRB Commodity Continuous Index remains intact and the trend in Commodities as an asset class has shifted from one we want to be selling rips to one that we're buying dips.

From an intermarket perspective, there are a lot of signals we've discussed that support higher Commodity prices such as the AUD/USD and CAD/USD breakouts, and today I want to share three more data points that have shown up in the last few weeks.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.