After some recent events over the weekend, I thought this would be as good of a time as any to remind everyone, once again, what Technical Analysis actually is….

Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market, and therefore its participants, as opposed to the goods and the services in which a particular market deals. 

If you are recognizing that the trend for stocks is up, or maybe down, you are a Technician.

If you acknowledge, in any way, that the fed purchasing bonds impacts market prices, you are a Technician.

If you think volatility for stocks is low, or high, or that the Volatility Index $VIX is even a thing, you are analyzing a price derivative of the S&P500, and therefore, performing classic technical analysis.

Are you analyzing the behavior of the market and its participants, or the goods and services in which the market deals?

All of these above represent the former, and completely ignore the latter. [Read more…]

This week I had a fun chat with Manish Khatta over at Potomac Funds.

He asked me a fun question, that if I could only take one chart with me, what would it be?

What do you think I said?

Give it a watch and see for yourself: [Read more…]

I get asked a lot about why I don’t think this is the beginning of a more severe correction.

We’ve been in the camp that the stock market is a hot mess, particularly in the U.S.

The indexes don’t tell the whole story. OK, maybe the Nasdaq does a little…

And we went over all of that on last night’s Live Video Conference Call.

But one chart that stands out to me that continues to suggest that this is more of a mess, rather than the beginning of a new crash, similar to last year or even Q4 2018.

It’s the list of new lows.

And NOT 52-week lows, because there won’t be anything happening there for a while. I’m talking about even much shorter-term lows.

This chart shows the percentage of stock making new 21 day lows. For those wondering, 21 days is about a month’s worth of trading: [Read more…]

The messy market environment continues.

It’s been happening for months.

Underneath the surface, we’re seeing rotation among sectors and the overwhelming theme, when you look through as many charts as we do, continues to be: MESSY.

There’s little or no evidence yet that this is the beginning of a larger more substantial sell-off. In fact, the data coming in continues to support that these rangebound markets are coming within the context of a longer-term bull market for stocks.

The, “This is Year 2 of a Bull Market” theme appears to still be playing out.

The world of stocks is not the S&P500 or Dow Jones Industrial Average. Look beyond that and what will you find?

A lot of messy, rangebound stocks, sectors and industry groups.

Meanwhile, Yen, Gold and Treasury Bonds stopped going down. Have you noticed? This is a flight to safety, as opposed to the flight away from safety that we had seen over the prior year.

Is this the first higher low in relative strength for Consumer Staples? If it is, then that’s consistent with this market being MESSY FOR LONGER.

Here is the S&P500 overlaid with Consumer Staples relative strength (inverted). So this lower high in the black line represents a Higher Low for Consumer Staples Relative: [Read more…]

It was a 10 hour chart marathon of 24 presentations being live streamed to thousands of people all over the globe.

And it actually worked!

To be clear, I had nothing to do with the Technology behind all that. This was all our incredible team along with the partnership with Stocktwits.

So hats off to everyone who helped get this done!

My job was easy. All I had to do was talk about charts with a bunch of old buddies. I can do that!. It was everything else involved that makes it more complicated. But they got it done.

So awesome. [Read more…]