I love technical analysis. I really do. There's no question that finding a nice chart brings a great amount of joy to my life. Today I want to share with you what I think is one of the most important developments to occur over the past couple of months. Interest rates have been ripping higher, yes we know this. But to me it's what is happening in Banks and Real Estate Investment Trusts that continues to grab my attention. These groups of stocks are doing the exact opposite today that they were doing at the beginning of 2016, when I was pounding the table about rates going a lot lower.

Interest rates have exploded higher into year-end from a low near 1.37% on the 10-year yield up to over 2.6%. But one of the big reasons that had me so bullish rates since July was that while the 10-year was making lower lows into the summer, the ratio between Regional Banks and REITs held the early 2015 low and started to rally:

For someone who uses Dow Theory every single day, it's not something that I write about much. I may indirectly reference certain tenets all the time, but rarely do I write specifically about the 130 year old Dow Theory. I think I pretty much laid it all out earlier this year in my post: 5 Things Every Investor Should Know About Dow Theory. The simple minded choose to stick to the Dow Jones Transportation Average and Dow Jones Industrial Average either confirming each other or diverging from one another. And while this may in fact be a one of Charles Dow's tenets (although they were Railroads back then, not the Transports we have today), it does not even make it into my top 5 most important tenets.

One of the characteristics of bull markets and strong uptrends is sector rotation. While Technology was the first to start leading the market higher in July, Financials and Transportation stocks have recently held the leadership duties. You can start to throw in Industrials the past few weeks into the leadership category as well. Meanwhile, some of the mega-cap names have held back Technology, at least temporarily, from continuing to make new highs. But when you look underneath the surface, I believe there is a much different story to tell.

There have been a lot of really amazing moves this week in the market. But one interesting development that I don't hear much chatter about is the monster move in Value stocks vs Growth stocks. Value stocks like Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan have exploded higher the past week at the same time that Wells Fargo stopped crashing. Meanwhile, in Growth land Amazon and Facebook have had a tough time. You can see this beautifully in the charts.

Over the past few days I've received requests from readers about my thoughts on Russian stocks. While I don't particularly care about the US/Russia relations when it comes to picking stocks to buy and sell, it seems to be something of interest to a lot of people. So let's dive in.

Every now and then I throw out a mystery chart just to get us thinking. Not knowing what a chart represents helps eliminate biases or 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.

Transports this week are hitting new 6-month highs relative to the S&P500. Remember, these guys have been the leader for years. To review, the Dow Jones Transportation Average peaked in late 2014, well before the S&P500 put in its final top in May of 2015. Moving forward, the Dow Transports put in their bottom in January of this year, the month before the S&P500. So yes, we want to continue to look to the Transports for leadership.

Today we are breaking down the Transportation stocks once again to see what is really happening underneath the surface:

You guys know that I consider the S&P500 to be just one index in just one country in just one asset class in the entire world. There is a lot more out there. And while this might be true, I would also argue that this one index is one of the more important ones that we need to be watching. It is a good representation of U.S. Stocks, since the Dow Jones Industrial Average is just 30 names, the Nasdaq is tech-heavy and the NYSE Composite has a lot of international exposure. One can argue that the Russell3000 is the best representation of the U.S. since it represents over 98% of all investable assets in U.S. equities, but there is no liquid asset to gain exposure to it.

So today we are breaking down the S&P500, setting price targets and defining our risk management levels:

It's important to recognize what type of environment we're in for the market. During different times of the year, traders and investors tend to behave in certain ways. When you smooth out the data over many years, their patterns become clear. We all hear about, "Sell in May and Go Away", but what about, "Remember to Buy In November"?

Today we're focusing in on the end of what is historically the worst seasonal period of the year for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. So what happens next?

With volatility spike in British Pounds, the more interesting story to me is how stocks are pushing up against the former all-time highs in 1999. Since that historic era in the stock market, British stocks have continuously attempted, and then failed to break through and finally make a new all-time high. The London FTSE 100 has been trying to stay above that historic market peak for almost 17 years.

Here is a chart of the London FTSE 100 going back to the late 1990s. The more times that a level is tested the higher the likelihood that it breaks. The reason is that there comes a point where anyone willing to sell at those levels will have already sold, ultimately leaving fewer sellers than buyers. This is when you get a "breakout":

This week high beta stocks are hitting fresh year-to-date highs relative to stocks with low volatility. This is a new trend, as lower volatility stocks did better than their higher beta counterparts in both 2014 and 2015. But this year has been a completely different story and it does not appear to be stopping.

Here you can see that while the S&P 500 was putting in new highs into May of last year, the ratio between high beta stocks and low volatility stocks had already peaked and was putting in a lower high. We are using the Powershares S&P 500 High Beta ETF $SPHB and the Powershares S&P 500 Low Volatility ETF $SPLV for the chart below.

We take a weight of the evidence approach here at All Star Charts. There is no one data point that will suggest buying is more advantageous than selling, or vice versa. In addition, the process of collecting and reviewing that data, to me, is really the most important thing I do. There are no short cuts in this business. You have to put in the work and I share the results of that homework with you daily so you don't have to.

Today I want to point you to a chart that I've kept for a while, but have never really shared because I don't want to overwhelm you with too much data. But since we're at a critical point, I think it's worth adding to the Chartbook this week: