I'm really fortunate that I get to interact with traders and investors from all over the world on a regular basis. I receive emails with great questions all the time. And while I'm happy to share my thoughts, it's these questions that really help force me into thinking about a lot of different things. So I'm learning every single day from this simple exercise. Please keep them coming!

Here is a good example of some of the questions I get. This one comes along quite often, in fact. So I wanted to share it with you and include my response.

Humans are incredible storytellers. We've convinced ourselves of all kinds of things that biologically don't exist, like state borders and even money. States aren't like mountains or rivers that we can see and touch. They're just stories that we all agree are true, which is why it works. Money is really just a worthless piece of green paper. But we all agree that a $10 bill gets you 1000 sheets of paper to print your charts out on. While it helps society function, these things we're referring to are just stories. They are really nice stories, but they're just stories. They exist only in our minds rather than biologically.

The reason homo-sapiens have conquered the world is because of our ability to believe stories. If there were 7.5 Billion chimpanzees in the world today instead of 7.5 Billion humans, it would be complete chaos. Other animals don't have the ability to use their imagination to deal with many others of the same species. That's why other strong and smart animals are locked up in cages at zoos and laboratories, while humans rule the world.

Annie Duke is the author of one of my favorite books, "Thinking In Bets". I often find myself recommending it to both colleagues and friends and family who aren't even in our business. While the book might be written by a poker player, and is somewhat about poker, it's really about the way we think, and this applies to market participation, but also life in general. It's a book I believe everyone should read, at least once.

We just got back from 6 days in India and I think it will add some value to give you some perspective on the kinds of things we learned. Sean McLaughlin is our Chief Options Strategist and had never been to Asia before. This was an eye opening experience for him and one that reiterated a lot of important things I noticed in my prior visits to Mumbai.

We attended a CMT Conference, we filmed a documentary on Indian Options Trading, we ate some of the best food this planet has to offer, we hung out with some of the nicest and coolest people know and got to learn a ton from everything around us. I love going to Mumbai and it’s so nice to see the rest of the gang enjoyed their time there as well.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In March I wrote a blog post explaining why I don't consume traditional media and the value I find in tuning out "the noise."

I got a lot of great feedback on that post and feel that it's a lesson worth reiterating every once in a while, so today I want to share a great example of the constant barrage of information we have working against us as market participants.

Technical Analysis doesn't give us all the answers. But it certainly goes a long way in helping us ask the right questions. That's really what this is about. No one knows what is going to happen next. Contrary to popular belief, this makes it an even playing field (don't @ me). Where the advantage truly lies is in those who analyze the behavior of the market vs those who ignore it.

There are many investors, most in fact, who completely disregard the behavior of the market in favor of some other brilliant strategy they believed they've come up with. My point is, if at the end of the day, price is the only thing that will pay us, why not start and end the entire process with the study of that price?

Not to get too philosophical on you guys, but just try to think about the things you're thinking about. What are the questions you're asking? Because you certainly don't have the answers. You have no answers, and neither do I. We have, what we think, are higher probability and lower probability outcomes. But we don't actually know.

We're all here for different reasons. Each of us have our own time horizons. My risk tolerance is different than yours.

There are 3 questions every investor should answer before ever entering into a new position:

1. Why am I here?
2. What is my time horizon?
3. How much am I willing to lose?

Let's address each of these one by one:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This week I've seen a chart of High Yield relative to Investment Grade Bonds floating around with various conclusions, but I wanted to use this to highlight some things to consider when using Bond ETFs as a proxy for what's happening in the market it's meant to track.

One of the most important concepts we talk about in Technical Analysis is confirmation.

Whatever thesis we have, we need price to confirm it before we can act...and if it doesn't then we need to respect that and get out of the way.

Risk management is our main priority and two simple charts do a great job of highlighting why we wait for confirmation.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

On July 23rd the NY Chapter of the CMT Association had the pleasure of hosting Tony Dwyer, Chief Market Strategist at Canaccord Genuity.

Tony provided an interesting perspective to our Technical-oriented group because while he focuses on Macroeconomic and Fundamental data in addition to Technicals, he emphasized that his approach is always data-based, not opinion-based.

He performs Technical Analysis of Fundamental data.

If you're familiar with our analysis, you've probably noticed that Fibonacci Extensions and Retracements play a vital role in our process.

From setting upside objectives to identifying areas of potential support and resistance, Fibonacci is a versatile tool.

As with any tool, there are times when it works better than others. And while we don't want to get into every intricate detail of how and where we use it, we did want to share a great example of Fibonacci in action.