How quickly people forget what a beast Amazon has been for years. All it took was an 18-month consolidation for investors to fall out of love with one of the greatest stocks in American history.

The bet the bears are making is that Amazon has been lagging and dragging down the Consumer Discretionary sector, considering it's 22% weighting in the index $XLY. So if you believe this is a big market top, I understand why you would think Discretionaries are setting up for a big fall. I totally get that.

Here's the chart:

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I discuss the less talked about tenets of Dow Theory. Everyone always likes to talk about the Dow Jones Industrial Average either confirming or diverging from the Dow Jones Transportation Average. But what gets forgotten is that there are many more tenets like Closing Prices are the most important, Identifying the direction of the Primary Trends and The Market Discounting Everything. Check out JC's 5 Most Important Dow Theory Tenets

This day and age we have other areas just as important, or even more important, than a group of Railroads, like what Charlie had when he first wrote down his Tenets in the late 1800s. Today we also compare the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the Semiconductor and Homebuilders Indexes as well as incorporate a series of ratios with Consumer Staples and Financials. It's more of an "and" than an "or" for us when it comes to Dow Theory.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Over the weekend I was running our "Weekend Momentum Report" for Institutional Clients and the message was very similar to last week, so I thought it was worth sharing.

Are you guys noticing how the new 52-week high list keeps getting longer, and not shorter?

I can't emphasize enough how the lies about weak market breadth have been just that: Lies, or myths, or whatever words you need to use that won't offend people. I stopped caring about that sort of thing a long time ago and just tell it like it is (someone has to). I'm just not seeing the weak breadth scenario playing out like they keep telling me. It's actually been quite the opposite. We've been seeing expansion in participation for months. So this is really nothing new.

The Value Line Index has been a helpful barometer of US Stock Market strength in the past, and today is no different.

Neil Blalock is my guest this week on the podcast. I believe he is absolutely the perfect compliment to all of the other guests we've had on over the years. While many technical analysis, especially on this podcast, come from an equities background, Neil was raised in Missouri and brought up with commodities all around him. It wasn't until much later in his career that he focused more on the stock market. Because Technical Analysis can be applied to asset classes of all kinds, Neil is able to use his expertise across markets. What's funny is that you can take Neil out of the farm, but you can't take the farm away from him completely. When I asked him about what interests him out there, he went right for the Soybean Markets! Neil just can't help himself and it's a beauty to watch. In this episode we dive into the agriculture commodities market as well as the softs, precious metals and ultimately into the equities and interest rate markets. This was a really fun conversation with a different perspective than what you might be used to!

Today we want to highlight a concerning development in the Nifty Realty sector and what it means for our approach to its components.

Andrew Thrasher is the person I turn to whenever I have questions about Volatility and the $VIX. I know he tracks the data much more closely that I do and he does a good job of simplifying what may seem like complicated concepts. With the current market environment pricing in very low volatility moving forward, one can argue there is too much "complacency" towards stocks. Historically, corrections are sparked from this sort of setup. Who better to bring on to the podcast for this special Volatility Episode than Andrew Thrasher, winner of the 2017 Dow Award for his paper on Forecasting a Volatility Tsunami. In this conversation we talk about the current volatility regime, the VIX curve looking out into early 2020 and how he incorporates breadth data to supplement his volatility analysis. I really enjoyed this conversation and it seems like the perfect time to talk about Volatility!

If you weren't too busy reading reports of upcoming recessions, you may have noticed that the MSCI World Index broke out to new all-time highs this month. The award for best ETF Ticker goes to the good folks at iShares: $URTH

After a 21-month bear market, the planet Earth is now starting a new leg higher. I continue to believe very strongly that if stocks are above last year's highs, it is incredibly irresponsible not to be aggressively long.

In September we saw a massive spike in the number of new 63-day highs in the Nifty 500's components.

Today I want to take a look at look at the data and answer the questions how rare is this signal? and what are the forward returns?

The Nifty Public Sector Bank and Media sectors of the market have been laggards for a while, but we're now beginning to see signs that rotation into these areas is ahead.