It's been a frustrating period for stocks in Canada over the past decade. Up just 7% since their 2008 highs, Canadian equities have been consistently underperforming for almost 10 years. But are things now finally changing?

Going through charts and coming up with conclusions is not just something you do once. For this to work, Technical Analysis has to be a lifestyle. Getting away from the screen regularly and coming back open minded is part of that work / life balance. In this conversation I talk about some of the struggles I've had personally trying not to let the implications of us being right in our assessment impact my decision making. Thanks to Donnie Hensley and Speedtrader for being a part of Chart Summit 2019.

On this podcast episode, we're flipping the script a bit. I was invited to come on the DailyFX Podcast hosted by Tyler Yell last week, and I wanted to share that audio with you here today. In this conversation, we discuss the recent Chart Summit in Breckenridge, CO, how and why I started Allstarcharts.com and what trends I'm currently seeing in the market. One thing we also talked about was the benefits of journaling and writing ideas down on paper. I really enjoyed this conversation so thank you Tyler Yell and DailyFX for inviting me on.

Chart Summit was a "Ski during the day and Chart at night" event held on February 22-23, 2019 in Breckenridge, CO. I co-hosted it with Brian Shannon and this is the video of my presentation:

The Top/Down Approach to Financial Markets using Technical Analysis

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Yesterday we posted a mystery chart and asked you all to let us know what you would do. Buy, sell, or do nothing?

The responses seemed pretty unanimous, suggesting selling at current levels...and one of you even guessed what it was! Maybe we're making these too easy.

Anyway, we agree with that bearish bias, but were posting to see what other viewpoints might be out there. I guess we got our answer.

Let's get into the real chart and why we feel it's relevant.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Short-term strength in Precious Metals continues, so I want to do an in-depth analysis of the space like I did last August to see if we're now entering "The Golden Age of Precious Metals".

One chart that I think sums up how I feel about Precious Metals is an equally-weighted index of Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium. While no longer in a long-term downtrend, it's not in an uptrend either. All that can be said is that it's testing the top of a multi-year range. Not all that exciting.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Coming into the year, the most important chart I was watching was the US Dollar. As far as risk appetite was concerned, I felt the Dollar would be a great tell. The way I saw it, the Dollar rallied throughout 2018 to achieve its upside objective and then broke the uptrend line from those former lows. If we were to just rip through those key levels without at least some kind of pause or consolidation, it would most likely be because of a tremendous flight to safety. Stocks would probably be doing poorly under those conditions.

But flip that thesis upside down, and a weaker Dollar would most likely mean strength in stocks. This is exactly what we've seen throughout January = A weaker Dollar and higher stock prices:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Yesterday I discussed how we use ratio charts to identify trends for both trading opportunities and information that we can use to make inferences about the stock market's next major move. Today I want to look at an inter-market relationship between Base Metals and Precious Metals that may help provide information about where interest rates are headed.

Vacation is over and January is in full gear. Over the holidays we had our downside targets hit in the S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average (23,350), Dow Jones Transportation Average (9300), Nasdaq100 (6150), and Russell2000 ETF (129). Now, just because these levels were achieved, doesn't mean we can't go substantially lower.

However, in this post we're focused on the current mean reversion we're seeing in stocks around the globe and how to profit from it. We'll worry about later this year later this year.

As we wrap up 2018, it's time to forget everything that happened this quarter and this year and start from scratch. It’s irrelevant. We’re moving forward with fresh eyes. This is our Q1 2019 Playbook.