I'm not sure if you guys noticed what's been going on in Small-caps over the past couple of weeks, but I think it's worth pointing out. First of all, remember this has been a tremendous leading indicator for a long time. I was pounding the table in November about that historic breakout when the Russell2000 Futures engulfed the prior 18 weeks. That was nuts. I said then that we would likely be talking about that event for decades to come. More recently I pointed out the fresh breakout after a period of consolidation. Each of these came along with stocks as an asset class in a healthy environment. They're in an uptrend and they're all in one together. Small-caps have been a great tell for the trend of the markets. If you've been bearish or not as long as you should have been, it's probably because you haven't taken the Russell2000 seriously enough.

What we're seeing right now appears to be a healthy consolidation within an ongoing uptrend. Chart observers might call these "Bull...

Consumer Discretionary has to be one of the most important sectors in the U.S. With Consumer Staples taking a nose dive recently, especially relative to the S&P500, the approach has certainly been "risk on". Severe underperformance out of the Staples historically comes within an environment of rising stock prices. Consumer Discretionaries are typically a beneficiary of this appetite for risk towards equities.

Today we are taking a deep dive look at Consumer Discretionary Stocks pointing out the good, the bad and the ugly. This is a great area to focus on right now because are monster stocks in very clean uptrends as well as disasters that can still be shorted.

We've been on the right side of the trend for stocks. A big reason for that was because of our focus on the Banking sector. Financials are one of the most important sectors on earth and it's hard for stocks as an asset class to fall if Bank stocks are healthy and breaking out to new highs. It's that simple. Pull up a 100 year old chart of J.P. Morgan $JPM and overlay the S&P500 chart. They look exactly the same. We want to always keep that in mind for future reference.

After such a nice run in stocks, and in Financials specifically, I think it's time to take a closer look at what is going on. Have we come too far? Or should we be expecting another leg higher? Rather than focusing on the sector ETFs or sector indexes, let's turn our attention to the actual components of this space. This weight-of-the-evidence approach is much more reliable and efficient than simply looking at an index representing that group. 

A lot of people seem to be bearish of stocks. Some think they can go higher. But I think they can still go a lot higher. This was the point that I was making on our Conference Call 3 weeks ago. The information coming in since then continues to confirm all of the things we wanted to see. While I was pounding the table to be buying I also pointed to a group of things we wanted to see happen to make sure we were in the right direction. This included US Bank Stocks rallying with US Interest Rates, and Gold and Bonds falling. We wanted to see Europe break out along with U.K., rather than rolling over creating a big mess out there. Nikkei needed to recover and stay in a bullish range in momentum. Every single one of these things happened. So yes, I absolutely think we can still go a lot higher in stocks.

From an asset allocation standpoint, one chart that has been an important one in my eyes is how US Stocks are doing against competing asset classes, bonds and Gold in particular. If stocks are in the bull market that we keep claiming they're in, then there...

I can't tell you guys how important it is to stop whatever you're doing and take a step back. It's so easy for us to get caught up in the day to day noise and forget about the underlying trends in the market. We're human. We're built to be this way. But recognizing this flaw is an important step in correcting it and trying to benefit from the fact that others are unaware. One of my favorite ways to do this is to look through a series of Monthly Candlestick Charts at the end of every month. Remember, we don't want to look at these mid-month as candles are incomplete. It is the final results that we are most concerned with.

We want to use this bigger picture strategy to identify the directions of the underlying trends in the market. This goes for all markets: Stocks, both U.S. and Globally, Interest Rates, Precious Metals, Energy, Currencies, etc. This is how we know what the trends are so we can then go to our weekly and daily charts to look for more tactical opportunities within those ongoing trends. This is a very important element to our top/down approach.

I'm back from a 2-week trip to Asia and it's almost like nothing has changed. Stocks are hitting all-time highs, so many people are trying to be cute calling for a top and the gold bugs are angry. The difference is that now the Small-caps have finally broken out of a 10-month base to new all-time highs. This goes for the Small-cap Russell2000 Index, S&P Small-cap 600 Index and the Russell Micro-cap Index. These indexes have done nothing in almost a year. Can you imagine the nerve of some people to call the US Stock Market "Stretched" or "Too far too soon" (whatever that means), when some of the most important indexes are just now breaking out of 10-month bases? Too far too soon? They've gone no where for 10 months? Are you kidding me?

It's like I'm talking to a wall sometimes. Too Stretched? Are we looking at the same market?

We talk about a lot of different markets here and we use a lot of different information to come up with a thesis. We look at International Stock Markets, Interest Rates, Sector Rotation, Individual Stocks, Breadth Measurements, Currencies, Commodities and an endless supply of Intermarket Ratios. But today I want to talk about a breakout that we've been waiting for now for some time.

Are stocks in the 9th year of a bull market? No. Not even close. I would argue we might even be in the first year. You can see some of my list of reasons outlined here in Modern Trader Magazine earlier this year. Another major component of what I consider to be a structural bull market is a relative outperformance compared with other assets. When we're looking at U.S. stocks, I think the obvious comparison is vs U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Today we're taking a look at the S&P500 ETF $SPY vs the U.S. Treasury Bonds ETF $TLT. The comparison is very simple: Stocks or Bonds? One argument I can make why we're not even through the first year of this structural bull market is because we have gone absolutely no where since 2007 relative to Treasuries. This has been a dead money trade for a decade. Late last year the ratio did break out to new highs, signaling to us that this was the beginning of a new move higher after 10 years of consolidation since that historic top in 2007, not the end:

One of the best ways to get a gauge of the strength or weakness in the U.S. Stock Market is to go through all of the stocks in the indexes. Every week I rip through all 500 stocks in the S&P500 on both weekly and daily timeframes. This works well for 2 reasons: 1) it gives me a great idea of how the entire market looks collectively, but it also allows me to find individual risk vs reward opportunities throughout the market. It works great for both.

For people who simply don't have the time, or interest, to get that deep into market analysis, I find the Dow 30 review to be really helpful. If you take a look at a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average going back 100 years and overlay it with the S&P500, they look pretty much the same. So if their correlations are that high, then going through the Dow 30 components on both weekly and daily timeframes is a much more efficient use of time.

First of all, these are 30 of the most important stocks in America, so that by definition makes them 30 of the most important in the world. Second, we want to take a weight-of-the-evidence approach here and ask ourselves, Are there more good ones or bad ones? ...

You will find that Gold is a sensitive subject for many people. They behave differently than they normally do around this topic. My friend Dr. Phil has me reading Beck's work on Cognitive Behavior Therapy so I can continue learning about how we behave as humans and why. It's amazing how I see it specifically in the market but also in the rest of the world every day. The Gold Market is no different. There's definitely something there. If you've been in this business long enough, you've noticed how people act differently about this one specific investment. Even investors who don't have positions in this rock still have an opinion on it and one that steers away from their traditional approach.

It's fascinating and I've been studying this for many years. I'm lucky that some of my predecessors who ultimately turned into mentors of mine used to price stocks and other assets in Gold terms. When I was a lot younger, this really helped me think more logically with respect to money flow around the world. Those early lessons have helped to this day. I have Gold to thank for...

Tuesday was a special day for us stock market participants. We don't always have such a spectacular display of completed Bullish Engulfings on a single day. It was an amazing thing to watch. Last night I could barely sleep. I just wanted to come back and make sure that actually happened. Man, what a rush!

For those of you who are less enthusiastic about Bullish Engulfings, or "outside days" as they call them in the West, these things don't happen too often, and there are even fewer instances where they all take place in unison. We're pretty stoked about it, I gotta tell you. What we're referring to here specially is the fact that yesterday, the lows of the day in many cases were below the prior day's lows, but the highs and closing prices were both above the prior day's high. The double extreme here is evidence of an overwhelming amount of demand relative to supply. Here is what it looks like:

Brian Shannon is one of the first Technicians that I ever followed. I used to watch his YouTube videos as far back as 2006. Brian is a pioneer in Technical Analysis in the Social Media era. His book Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes is one of the most important books I've ever read. In this episode @alphatrends walks us through his multi-timeframe approach and how that can be incorporated into your process regardless of time horizon. We discuss the current U.S. Stock Market environment including price behavior and sentiment. Since Brian is one of the highest authorities on the subject of Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) we couldn't help ourselves but get into the subject at length. This was a great conversation with someone who has been a mentor to a lot of us over many years.