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!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In this week's Chart of The Week, we discussed the lackluster rally attempt in international stocks relative to the S&P 500.

We concluded that the trend of underperformance remains firmly intact, which brings us to this week's mystery chart reveal.

Let's take a look.

People don't like it when I tell them the Dow is going to 30,000. They tend to get even more worked up when I tell them it's going to 40,000 after that.

I'm old enough to remember a time when stocks going up was a good thing. In my opinion, there is still a massive amount of underexposure in the equities market.

So when I get asked, "Well JC, what's going to take stocks to those levels?". I think it's pretty clear that it's Technology:

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

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Since late August when interest rates around the globe began their counter-trend rally we've begun to see some outperformance from international equities...leading to headlines like this.

So, is the trend in international underperformance finally over?

Let's take a look.

Over the last few weeks, we've talked about potential long-term bottoms in weaker sectors like Nifty PSU Banks, Pharma, among others.

Today we're taking a look at the Nifty Media Index as it confirms a failed breakdown that could serve as the catalyst for a new move higher.

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about why we want to keep selling gold and buy stocks instead. This trade is working and we don't want to fight it. This has been our base case for months, as you can see here. One of the things that we want to incorporate into our study of price is the positioning of Commercial Hedgers and Speculators, which is published weekly by the CFTC in the Commitment of Traders Report.

In this video I explain how we use this data, why we care, and when to pay attention!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday's Mystery Chart had a lot of people talking and guessing (incorrectly, as usual), so thank you all for your feedback and participation.

Overall the feedback was the chart was a longer-term buy, but people had concerns about how far it's run in the near-term.

With that as our backdrop, let's get into it.

Here's the US Healthcare Providers (IHF) which is emerging from a consolidation via a sharp rally as momentum gets overbought.

Overall this looks like the start of the subsector's next major move to the upside, but we'll get more information about its sustainability from seeing how prices digest their more than 20% gains since early October. Bulls want to see that correction occur through time, rather than...

In September we wrote about the Pharmaceuticals sector and its inability to gain traction due to relentless weakness in many components, particularly its largest component, Sun Pharmaceuticals.

Over the last two months the sector is basically flat, but several signs have emerged to suggest that we're potentially at a major inflection point.

With that as our backdrop, let's get into the charts.

This week's Chart of The Week outlined a compelling case for the Pharmaceutical sector to bottom at current levels, so this post is going to outline the stocks we want to be buying to capitalize on this potential inflection point.

Let's take a step back and talk about what a huge waste of money I think it is to own gold. It's not just that I don't think it goes up in value, it's more about what else we could be doing with that money. It's the opportunity cost here that I believe burns the hole in your pocket. Will our money be treated better in rocks or in stocks? I still think it's in stocks.

In early October, I put out a note reiterating why we wanted to be selling gold. This is after over a year of a bullish approach towards the yellow metal. So to be clear, I am not a gold bug or a gold hater. The truth is that I couldn't care less whether gold doubles in price or gets cut in half. It's not my problem. For me, Gold is just another asset in a humongous world of many assets. If you think it's anything more than that, I believe you've already lost.

As a reminder, a big reason why we were so bullish of Gold throughout the 4th quarter last year and beyond was because Commercial Hedgers had on their largest net long position in history. Commercial hedgers in...

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!