Continuing with a theme I discussed coming out of Labor Day Weekend, volatilities continue to remain low across major stock indices, within the majority of sectors, and by extension many key stocks. Until that changes, there's no need to deviate from my current plan of keeping things simple. When bullish opportunities present themselves, it is pretty simple -- I want to be long calls. There's no need to overthink things here.

Not surprising, there is a stock on our radar that it is breaking out to all-time highs with options pricing in volatility near the lowest levels seen in the past year. A perfect candidate for straight naked calls.

The Island Reversal is a rare but important pattern that has shown up across many of India's Major Indexes this month. As a result, I want to use this post as an educational opportunity to highlight what this pattern is, as well as explain how we're interpreting it in today's market.

There are tiny little irrelevant markets everywhere like Pot stocks and Crypto Currency. These could disappear tomorrow and it won't matter. The sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds and other monster institutions that make markets move have to be in the bond market. They're too big not to. So if you want an inside look at the money flow from one place to another, an intermarket approach really helps.

I've been a lonely stock market bull for most of this year. It feels like every time I've told people that I think we're closer to the beginning of a bull market than the end, they think I'm crazy. That reaction has gotten me even more bullish. Not only does price continue to suggest we're heading much higher, but sentiment and positioning points towards the same.

I've made the argument that Technology is going to take us much higher, as it is just now finally breaking out above the March 2000 highs. It took 17 years to digest those 1990s gains. We're now just moving on. All that market cap getting going is one obvious catalyst that I've been talking about since last year.

Another big one has to be the bond market. If interest rates get going, selling in...

I started taking wine a little more seriously over the past couple of years. It's been fun to learn about different varietals and the countries that grow them best. The geography is really interesting and it's fun to go visit places like Tuscany and Bordeaux. The whole process has been rewarding in a lot of ways. When you're at a nice restaurant, for example, you want to make sure you choose the best wine that's going to work best with your meal for your specific palate at your individual price point. Being able to explain your preferences and have an intelligent conversation with the Sommelier helps you do that.

When I first started studying wine I quickly realized how many similarities there were between the wine world and trading. It's crazy. The Court of Master Sommeliers developed what they call the Deductive Method. What you're essentially doing is taking into account all of the characteristics being displayed and eliminating possibilities along the way. So for example, if the wine is white, you know it's not a Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir. Then you smell it and taste it to...

This is the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Wednesday September 19th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call:

If you've been paying attention, we've been bullish and long Nike $NKE for a little while now. Here's our trade from July 2 where we got long calls (still holding), and here's our more recent trade where we are fading the hysteria and elevated vol from September 11th. Well, sometimes we're a sucker for what works and often go back to the well. With that in mind, we've identified some similar action in Pfizer $PFE that has us interested and is pretty compelling.

It feels good to be back in California. I just spent the past week in Texas, and before that I was in Toronto and Philly. I won't be leaving the west coast for a few months and I couldn't be more thrilled about it. I like it here.

When you force yourself to leave to computer screen as much as I do, you'll quickly learn the value in getting away and then coming back to reevaluate everything you previously thought before you left. There is a lot of data waiting for you once you're back at the desk. Is there enough data to change your mind or does it just confirm what you felt previously?

I spent last weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, looking through charts and enjoying the start of Football Season. At this point, College and Pro Football have each begun. Back when I lived in New York, this was my favorite time of the year: September and October. The weather is the best and everyone is back from their weekends in the Hamptons, Jersey Shore, Cape Cod or various other northeast vacation spots. The city gets going again. But so do the markets.

There are few people in this world who spend as much time with active traders as Mike Bellafiore, who has been a Managing Partner at SMB Capital since 2005. I think his unique perspective on trading and traders themselves is the perfect compliment to a lot of the other guests that we've had on the podcast. In this episode, Mike talks about some of the qualities that he's seen in the more successful traders as well as common mistakes he sees being made on the desk. Throughout the conversation, Mike gives us an inside look into the trading floor, how they separate traders into teams and the way the more experienced, proven traders help the younger up and comers. I really enjoyed this one!

A few weeks ago I took a look at the Precious Metals space from the top-down for Premium Members of Allstarcharts, concluding that despite stretched sentiment there's very little evidence that suggests being long this space over the intermediate or long-term. With that said, today I want to discuss the developments in this space since then that have shifted the short-term reward/risk in favor of the bulls.

Consumer Staples have been going up. Stocks like Costco, McCormick and Clorox have been ripping to new all-time highs. The Sysco in the Staples sector has even embarrassed Cisco in Technology. It's been a nice run. The question here, however, is whether or not the strength in Staples is evidence of a flight to safety and whether we should be concerned about the overall market? This is a very important question and I want to walk you through my thought process.

Fine. I get it. Businesses making political stances -- whether you agree with the stance or not -- rubs you the wrong way. And sure, aligning with a professional athlete at the center of a hot-button controversy only makes it more cringe-worthy for you. You're entitled to that opinion and I support your right to voice your displeasure. But for the love of all that is sacred in the world of trading, do.not.let.your.politics.or.emotions.get.in.the.way.of.making.profitable.economic.decisions.

Just don't do it.

After a more than 40% year-to-date and 60% 2-year decline, we've been eyeing Tata Motors on the long side for some mean reversion. For the last two months the stock has been range-bound, but the recent breakout has shifted the reward/risk in favor of the bulls over the short-term.

This week's "Chart of The Week" is exploring the potential 20% upside in Tata Motors, however, I want to use this post to explore the rest of the Automobile Sector for potential opportunities.

I think the overwhelming theme here is that there are a lot more stocks I want to buy than stocks I want to sell. Why do we need to over complicate this?

Another thing I'm seeing is the January highs as a reference point. The question is whether or not the market will be able to surpass that former resistance, proving there is more demand than supply there, or if it's the other way around? Are there, in fact, more sellers up here than buyers? We can see this key January pivot point in most of the major indexes: S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Transportation Average and Russell3000. Can we get through those highs like the Small-caps, Mid-caps and Nasdaq already have?

I believe the answer is in the components. How are individual stocks reacting to those former highs? Are they breaking through resistance or running into sellers and rolling over?

For us, the big question going into the weekend was whether or not the most recent leg higher in U.S. Stocks is the beginning of something bigger, a breakout of epic proportions, or just a major whipsaw that will lead to further selling into September and October, two of the most historically volatile months of the year.

We see various crowds. On one hand, you have the bearish cult who for many reasons have fought this uptrend the whole time. Whether they just missed the last couple of years in stocks or, worse in some cases, missed the entire decade, they've been very wrong. There's even a group who wishes harm on the United States and elsewhere around the world, just because they disagree with decisions being made in D.C. They certainly don't want stocks to rise. And then you have another group, who is indifferent and is just looking for a favorable risk vs reward shorting opportunity and they think this is finally it.

From time to time, a slowly developing opportunity presents itself and in doing so gives you multiple ways to profit -- while also incrementally reducing your risk as time goes along. This type of situation is presenting itself currently in Marathon Oil $MRO.

Continental Resources $CLR has been consolidating in a range just below 4-year highs, and recent price action has brought it to a level where I like our odds for an income trade.

This has been the big theme throughout this bull market: Money flowing into Consumer Discretionary stocks at a more rapid rate than towards Consumer Staples. By our work, this is characteristic of an uptrend in U.S. stocks and has been a great tell for a long time. You guys following along for the past few years know that well. We even nicknamed the Staples underperformance as, "The Most Bullish Chart On Earth" (See May 2017). 

Following up on our discussion from the September All Star Options conference call, we will lay out here the trade in $CME that we presented to subscribers. The stock move is underway, but there is still plenty of meat on the bone and I like the trade even more now.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

For most of this year we've been writing about the overwhelming amount of bullish evidence for US Equities, however, as part of our "weight of the evidence" approach we're always questioning our thesis (i.e. here and here).

In today's post I want to share that exercise as I perform it, outlining some current concerns and what the market would potentially look like in an environment where stocks as in the US as an asset class are falling. We're going to stick with our top-down approach and start with International Equities and inter-market relationships, then drill down into specific examples that help illustrate what we're talking about.

Stocks are still near all-time highs, volatilities are once again compressed, earnings season is behind us, and some bullish runs in individual names are looking extended. Coming out of Labor Day Weekend, the game plan should be to keep it simple until things change.

The Nifty Financial Services Index accounts for roughly a third of the Nifty 500's weighting. With the next largest components Consumer Goods (13.40%), Energy (12%), and IT (10.90%) ripping to the upside, we know that they'll eventually need to rest, which is why the Nifty Financial Services Index is by far and away the most important chart in India right now.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Two weeks ago I wrote about the Canada's Energy markets, but today I want to do a deep dive into the US Energy Markets. In line with our top-down approach, we'll start with Commodities in general, get into Crude Oil and some inter-market relationships, individual sector ETFs, and finally equities with the best reward/risk scenarios.

I'm in Texas all week talking charts and watching college football. I will be presenting at the local chapters of the CMT Association, including Dallas, Austin and Houston. If you're in the area, I invite you to join us one of these evenings for a walk through what we're currently seeing in the market. I'll show you how I incorporate a top/down approach looking at global stock indexes and U.S. sectors & industry groups to ultimately find individual stocks to buy and sell.

Here are the details:

*Note the time for the Dallas meeting has been changed to 4PM ET