You can data-mine all you want. Tell me the world is ending, the U.S. President is crazy, nuclear war is around the corner, the N.Y. Jets don't have a quarterback.....Whatever it is that you're using to justify your heavy cash positions or short exposure the past 18 months, just remember this: Stocks are hitting all-time highs. Let's go over this again: Stocks are not just hitting multi-month highs, or even 52-week highs. Stocks that are driven by supply and demand dynamics of investors all over the world are at the highest levels in the history of stocks.

So how do we define stocks? That's the tricky part. Is it the S&P500? Although it's only 1.4% away from an all-time high, and clearly in a strong uptrend defined by higher highs and higher lows, I would argue that it's only part of the equation. What about the Russell3000, which represents approximately 98% of all investable assets in the U.S. equities market? Although just 1.7% from its all-time high, it is still just representing 1 country. There has to be a better way.

The Dow Jones Transportation Average has been one of the best leading indicators for the direction of markets over the past few years. This index peaked in late 2014, six months before the S&P500 put in its top. The Transportation Average also bottomed out in January 2016, the month before the S&P500 finally made its bottom. Moving forward, we want to continue to give this index the weighting it deserves.

With the recent underperformance out of this group, let's dive in and see what is going on underneath the surface. Is this the beginning of a major sell-off in Transports, which would lead the rest of the market lower? Or has this just been a correction within a strong uptrending market?

Every market environment is different. It's changing every day. What might give us insight into what's happening during one period of time in the market doesn't guarantee that it will help in the future, or ever again for that matter. Back in 2008-2009, correlations spiked all over the world and the US Dollar was moving in the exact opposite direction as the S&P500. Watching the Euro and more specifically the Euro/Yen was a huge advantage back them. I remember it like it was yesterday. But in today's environment, those negative correlations are no longer valid. It's a different market environment now. It's always different.

So while the EUR/JPY and the US Dollar Index were great tells for the direction of US Stocks in 2008, today we're looking at different indicators. Two that I'm particularly focused on right now are Germany and London. First of all, these are 2 of the most important indexes in the world. Top 3? Top 5? Either way, both of them are on the Mount Rushmore of Stock Market Indexes.

You guys know how much I like my intermarket analysis. It's a tool that we have as market participants that simply cannot be ignored. If you're putting together a portfolio for a client, managing your own account or just looking for major trends, comparing asset classes to one another really shows where money is flowing and where it is flowing from. It would be irresponsible of us to ignore these intermarket relationships if we're trying to make money in the market and manage risk responsibly along the way.

Today, we're taking a look at one of the most important developments across the globe. We're comparing the U.S. Stock Market and the U.S. Treasury Bond Market to one another. To keep things nice and simple we'll use the most liquid exchange traded funds that represent each market: $SPY and $TLT. As you can see here, in November last year, Stocks broke out of a 9+ year base to new all-time highs. The important thing we want to reiterate here is that the breakout has held relentlessly, consolidated for half a year, and now the path of least resistance appears to be higher:

Chemical stocks are breaking out to all-time highs. It's not just one or two of them either, they are doing this collectively as a unit. When we see broad-based participation out of a group, it's not something we want to ignore. Today I want to smooth things out and look at this group from an Equally-weighted basis. While monster stocks like Dow Chemical and Du Pont break out to new all-time highs, the question we want to ask is whether or not it's just them or are the rest of them joining along?

I've been out of town for the past week clearing my head and taking a break from markets. This is one of the most important parts of my entire process. I explained why in this post. While I was away, I peaked at the Internets to see what the twitterati was up to while I was on vacation. Since I was in Hawaii, 6 hours removed from New York City, most of what I read was after market hours. Boy are you guys pessimistic! Do you not see that stocks are in major uptrends? And not just in the U.S. but all over the world? Do you not read anything I write? I could not have laid out the bull case an clearer before I left.

Today I wanted to share with you what I think is one of the more bullish developments we've seen this month: the Russell Micro-cap Index breaking out to a new all-time high. If I have not exhausted this notion enough by now, let me stress: a new all-time high is NOT a characteristic of a downtrend. This is not an opinion. This is simply a fact. Write it down. Tattoo it on your forehead if you have to. Trust me, it took me a long time to finally understand this concept, so don't...

This week was our monthly conference call for Premium Members. We discussed a lot of things, mostly surrounding the fact that stocks are in uptrends all over the world and we are seeing broadening participation among stocks in the United States. Sectors that had been left for dead the past 6 months like Industrials and Materials are now coming up on all of my momentum and relative strength screens. Healthcare and Utilities are also breaking out to new highs. It's not just one sector or a handful of stocks with some stupid acronym. This is a stock market rally that I believe is a lot younger than most people believe.

Today I wanted to share with you one of the things that has stood out to me the most over the past couple of months. It should not be a surprise really because I've been pointing to the way this is setting up since late last year. I think this can really be a monster. I definitely recommend watching the video archive of this month's call. We're talking over 150 slides filled with...

The debate that will always persist is the Stocks vs Gold question. Do we own gold? Do we own stocks? Do we own both? What percentage of our portfolio should be in precious metals? Do we own the physical or the ETF? Whether Gold is at new highs or new lows, the questions will keep coming. It's something that us as humans are driven to constantly. I've learned to embrace it. While I treat Gold and the S&P500 the same way I treat Cotton futures and the Egypt30 Stock Index, it's understandable why others don't.

So let's look at it. In which direction should we expect the next 20% - Gold or US Stocks? 

The Bond Market is a very misunderstood place. Usually all we hear are complaints. Fed this, Yellen that, something about her books being beige. I don't know. I can't keep up anymore. To me the Bond Market is place to find information that we can't get anywhere else. Even if you don't trade bonds, you must care about the direction of interest rates. But more importantly it's the intermarket implications of movements in rates that we're most concerned about. How is the next 3-6 month direction of interest rates and credit spreads going to affect stocks and commodities? WAs investors we're obviously interested in all of these things.

Let's get right into it:

This concept of new 52-week highs can be somewhat confusing. I get it. How does it work? If we make new highs and the list of new highs doesn't confirm, do we short everything? How do we know if and when the internals of the market have confirmed or diverged from whatever the price of the index itself is doing? These days, it seems like people have more questions than answers. So today we'll take a look at what's going on and see if we can try to work through it together.

It's the end of the month so you know what that means: Brand new freshly completed monthly candlesticks for us to review. While I normally use weekly charts to get structural perspective on markets and then daily charts for tactical purposes, the monthly chart review is done at the end of each month to help identify the primary trends around the market. This is for us who want to avoid the day to day noise surrounding politics or the Fed or whatever news story is being sensationalized this week.