Today we have a special episode of the podcast. I think it's important to take a step back from the markets and Technical Analysis sometimes, and talk about something that is universal to us all. For this episode I invited Morgan Housel to come and talk about the importance of writing. For those of you who have been following my work for a long time, you often hear me talk about the personal benefits of putting my ideas down on paper. Sure, people all over the world get insight into what our firm is thinking, they get steady idea flow from my blog, and in some lucky cases, people might even learn something. But the truth is, my writing is an incredibly selfish endeavor. It forces me to think through the important concepts. And as Morgan talks about in this episode, the inability to express my thoughts in written form probably means my idea is stupid to begin with. The easier it is to write about, the better it will usually be received by our audience.

Morgan Housel is definitely one of my favorite financial writers in...

Jeff Macke is the guy I turn to whenever I have questions about the Consumer. Anything retail, restaurants, internet sales, he's the one we want to listen to. Jeff and I have known each other for many years and are friends with a lot of the same people. Here's an old clip I found of him and I talking about Gold & Silver back in January 4, 2012.

In this episode we talk about the restaurant stocks, pharmacies, which areas he wants to avoid and which ones he wants to own. He says the pair trade of the decade could very well be: Long Shaquille O'neil (Papa Johns $PZZA) and Short Kanye West (The Gap $GPS). This was a really fun conversation. I picked up some good ideas and had a few laughs.

I hope you enjoy!

In this episode of The Money Game, Phil wanted to talk about the importance of exercise. He compares the human mind and body to auto racing and how in order to succeed, the car must be in great condition. For Financial Advisors, Traders, Portfolio Managers and Analysts, we regularly go through very stressful times, and in other cases very boring times. In order to put ourselves in a position to excel, we need to have our minds right. The best way to make sure the mind is in top working order, is to make sure the body isn't being ignored. They work together.

Phil reiterates a lot of points that are probably familiar to a lot of us who focus on physical and mental health, which is fantastic. But for those of you looking for a spark, just to get the ball rolling, Phil offers some advice on easy ways to get started. He also discusses the Height-to-Waste Ratio and what we should be looking for. I thought that was really helpful too.

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I'm so excited to have Katie Stockton on the podcast. Katie is someone whose work I've followed my entire career. Even early on, she was there talking about oscillators and price behavior. She's certainly on the list of Technicians who have influenced my work over the years. Back in the day she worked with Mike Hurley, another friend of the podcast and our featured guest in mid-March. After spending most of her career on the sell side, Katie has adapted to the changes in traditional wall street research and has now gone independent, recently founding Fairlead Strategies. This was a fun conversation that I really enjoyed. Prior to recording, I told her to just pretend we're at a wine bar with our laptops. What would that sound like? This...

In this episode of the Money Game, Phil and I talk about how Technical Analysts have an advantage in the current global environment. The fact that we're accustomed to focus on price behavior, and therefore tune out all the noise, we already have those good habits in place for a world filled with more noise than ever. I see people daily poisoning themselves with massive doses of news consumption, particularly horrible things happening all over the world. This conversation brings up some great points about taking care of your business, your family, your health and making sure that the things you can control are in order. If you don't have your own house in order, you can't help others. So if you really want to do right by the world, take care of yourself first, and then you will have the ability to help those in need. 

This was a really cool comparison Phil is making about the advantages technicians...

Jordan Kotick is one of the key people that early in my career inspired me to be more intermarket oriented. They would ask Jordan about the S&P500 and he would go into a tangent about bonds. They would ask him about Emerging Markets and he'd whip out, what he refers to as, "Chinese Dow Theory". For over a decade, Jordan was the Managing Director of Macro Strategy at Barclays and then Managing Director of Cross Asset Strategy at RBC Capital Markets. He is the first person to have ever been president of both the CMT Association (then called the MTA), and the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts (CSTA). In this podcast episode we talk about some of the great lessons Jordan learned over the years and what sorts of markets and charts investors should be paying attention to in the current environment. This was a really fun conversation and was great to catch up!

Jeff deGraaf is one of those analysts who influenced me very early on. Something I've always admired about him is how much emphasis he puts on first identifying what type of market environment we're in, before then giving more or less weight to different tools and indicators. This is one of those important steps that I think gets forgotten quite often when you see investors trying to always incorporate a certain strategy or approach regardless of the environment. In this episode, Jeff compares this stock market crash, and subsequent recovery, to others in the past including 1987. He does a nice job of incorporating what is currently taking place in Bonds and Gold into his analysis for stocks. I think there are a lot of great lessons in this conversation with, who I believe, is one of the best Technical Analysts in the world today.

Chris Ciovacco is someone whose work I've followed for many years. His approach to markets is similar to mine, in that he incorporates a weight-of-the-evidence technical strategy. His open-mindedness and ability to set up multiple outcomes to prepare for, is one to be admired. In this episode, Chris walks through his thought process when analyzing the current environment. He makes a great comparison to early 2009 and asks whether we're in January '09, just before another severe decline in stocks, or in May, on the way up after already bottoming.

This is a great episode that I hope makes you think differently and inspires you to keep an open mind and come up with your own possible scenarios for the coming months and quarters. This was a fun one...

Adam Koos is a portfolio manager who uses Technical Analysis to make decisions for the clients he advises. In times like these, Financial Advisors all over the world are getting asked the hard questions. In this episode, Adam talks about how Technical Analysis has helped both his decision making and the communication with the families he works for. It's really cool to see these tools helping advisors everywhere, and especially a friend who I speak to regularly about markets and other common interests, like sports and wine.

Adam and I were coincidentally both featured in a Wall Street Journal article this week where we shared some of our favorite tools to help us in the current environment. He is the Founder of...

A couple of weekends ago, I had the privilege of hosting Chart Summit 2020, an online virtual Technical Analysis conference. We had over 30 presentations, 10,000 attendees and raised a ton of money to help the people who need it most right now. A great part about the whole thing is, not only all the fun we had, but how much we all learned!

I'm so excited about it that we decided to turn my conversation with Jay Woods into a podcast episode, so you can listen to it on the go. Jay is a good friend and currently a Floor Governor of the New York Stock Exchange. It's one of the most beautiful buildings in the world and it represents so much. Jay is an ambassador for everything it stands for. In this conversation, Jay walks us though exactly what's going on in the minds of all the traders and market makers that are used to spending their days on the floor of the exchange. These are some interesting times. I...

Chart Summit 2020 is officially in the books. What an amazing time we had. Wow!

The videos of all the presentations are now up and you can go to ChartSummit.com and stream them for FREE!

As we always like to do here after Chart Summit, Steve Strazza and I sat down to discuss what we just witnessed. This was one of the most amazing list of speakers I've ever seen at a Financial Conference. I can't even believe we were able to pull this off! Plus, we raised over $50,000 in donations, on the first day alone, to help fight coronavirus. Thank you to everyone who attended and donated! Also, big shoutout to Traders4ACause for helping us choose the organizations we're donating to and collecting all the money. We could not have done this without you!

In this...

Mike Hurley has been an inspiration to me for many years. When it comes to market breadth, this is the guy. He'll tell you he learned it from his predecessors and how he's standing on the shoulders of giants and all those things he discusses in this episode, but for me personally, he's been a great influence for sure. Many of you know how seriously I take my breadth work and how valuable it has been to so many of us for many years. It's people like Mike and others who have helped my process evolve to where it is today.

This was a really fun podcast for me because the topic of market breadth and internals is so near and dear to my heart. In this podcast episode, Mike and I talk about history and how different turning points in the stock market have been led by breadth deterioration (at tops) and breadth improvement (at bottoms). We also discuss 2020 so far and how breadth was deteriorating well before the S&P500 and Dow hit their ultimate highs. Once again, it was breadth that got us out of the way of trouble this...