It's that time again. I have a mystery chart that I think is worth paying attention to. As always with these, I took out the y-axis and all labels to eliminate any biases. Remember, the idea is not to guess what this actually is (although most of you guys can't help yourselves). The point of this exercise is to think about what you would do?
This can be a Stock, ETF, Commodity, Currency, Index, Ratio, etc. What do you want to do here? Buy, Sell or Do Nothing?
Every now and then I throw out a mystery chart just to get us thinking. Not knowing what a chart represents helps eliminate biases and any ideas we may already have in our heads. Today we are looking at what I think is one of the more interesting developments in the market today.
This is a chart that has been in an uptrend for many years. After about 4 years of consolidation, prices appear to be breaking out above the upper of these two converging trendlines.
I think a really important concept that too often gets overlooked is the power of keeping an open mind. Why must we stick to a bearish or bullish stance? What is wrong with neutral sometimes? Just because our upside get hit, does that mean we need to flip bearish and start shorting everything? I don't think so. I much prefer taking profits when objectives get achieved and then reevaluating once we get more price data. We don't know what is going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month. No one does. So let's appreciate the fact that the future is unknown and therefore all possibilities should be considered.
Today's Chart of the Week represents what I consider to be part of the bullish case for the S&P500 in 2016. I'm not ready to pound the table bullish, or bearish for that matter, but if this one plays out the way it looks, I would argue that it's a giant feather in the hat for the bulls. This is the mystery chart that I tweeted out yesterday, for those of you who have been asking.
