We're always focused on positioning. Stocks don't go up because of some article written by a 26 year old journalist who has never made a trade in her life. Stocks move based on positioning from institutions. When the market is caught leaning the wrong way, the unwind can create spectacular moves. This is the key to the market: positioning, not the noisy media.

As many of you know, every single day I look for risk vs reward opportunities that are skewed in our favor. We're not here to be right, we're only here to make money. There is a big difference between the two. In other words, we don't care if we get it wrong. We just want to make sure that when we are right, that we're really really right. Isolating asymmetric risk vs reward opportunities is how we do that, and I believe we do it very well.

I really don't think this market is ready for the US Dollar to collapse. We've had a monster rally in the Greenback all year and emerging markets and precious metals have felt the pain. I believe that's about to change dramatically.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

August's monthly charts are out for Premium Members, but in this post I want to highlight some of the key changes to, or continuation of, the structural trends that these long-term charts provide perspective on. This 30 minutes per month is some of the most valuable time each month.

This is easily the most valuable exercise I do each month. It takes me half an hour, just 12 times a year. It's the best 6 hours I'll spend in 2018. It helps eliminate the noise by forcing us to only look once a month. It brings us home, to the primary trend. It's easy to get lost in the daily rhetoric. This part of the process helps us completely ignore that garbage and focus on what matters.

Here's what we got this month:

We'll start with the Dow Jones Industrial Average as it tries to make a move above 27,000. There's been trouble just below that from the extension target of the 2007-2009 decline. This retest of former highs comes at a time where the Dow Jones Transportation Average is already in the process of clearing. First, here's is the Industrial Average:

Now here is the Transportation Average. Remember, that when they both make new highs, it is confirming that they are indeed, still in bull market uptrends. It's when one is making new highs and the other is diverging in a different direction that we want to be more cautious. This last happened in Q1 & Q2 of 2015 as the...