From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This post is a follow-on to this week's "Chart of The Week" which covers the recent breakout in Gold.

Here we'll take a macro look at the Precious Metals space, update our thesis, and outline the best ways to take advantage of it.

Despite our cautious outlook for Equities, there's one stock setting up for a potential short squeeze...and the skewed reward/risk has gotten our attention.

Let's take a look.

We've been outlining our thesis for weakness in Indian Equities for over a month now, but that was a tactical call within the context of bullish longer-term picture.

Unfortunately, with the last week or two of action, we've seen an expansion of stocks participating to the downside which suggests this near-term weakness could continue for the rest of the fourth quarter. Rather than the weakest stocks catching up to the leaders, the leaders are now catching down to the weakest names.

Let's take a look.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

Jeff Hirsch is the Author of the Annual Stock Trader's Almanac. He, and before that his father Yale Hirsch, has been publishing the must-read almanac every year since 1967. This year is the 53rd edition of the Almanac and a lot of the smartest traders I know keep the most recent copy on their desk. I personally have issues I've kept going back decades. When it comes to Seasonality, whether it's the 1-year cycle, Presidential cycle, or even intra-month and intra-week cycles, Jeff is the person I turn to first. The month of January brings along a ton of information we can use to help us make decisions in the stock market the rest of the year. The track record is pretty spectacular, as we discuss in this episode. Today, Jeff uses these seasonal trends to help him in his role as Chief Strategist at Probabilities Fund Management. In this episode of the podcast we...

We've been outlining our thesis for a choppy environment in stocks both in India and globally for several weeks now and evidence continues to build that the market agrees with us.

With weakness in the broader market, sectors and individual stocks that have not participated remain at risk to lead to the downside.

Today we're looking at the Auto sector, which looks vulnerable to a swift 10% move to the downside if support at its multi-month lows breaks.

Feels to me the stock market is at one of those inflection points. Personally, I'm finding it difficult to find trades that I'm willing to bet too aggressively long here. But on the flip side, I'm not willing to get aggressively short here either. In situations like this, the best move is often to patiently wait for the market to tip her hand. Problem is, we all know waiting is the hardest part (cue Tom Petty).

Of course, there are strategies options traders can employ profitably when the expected move is a sideways chop fest. And the best way to line the odds of profitability more in our favor is to find situations where a sideways grind has already begun to take shape and it is coupled with higher than average volatility being priced into the options. When selling premium, this gives us some nice cushion to absorb some moves.

I've found just such a situation for us to take advantage of.

It's been a while since we've had a conversation about new all-time lows for stocks. But this week we saw the Regional Bank Index Fund close at new all-time relative lows. This is the lowest they've ever been.

What's fascinating is how this is happening just as the Financials Index Fund is attempting to break out to new all-time highs, finally exceeding their 2007 peak before the financial crisis.

Here in this chart you can see the $XLF trying to finally get through those 2007 highs for the first time ever. But Regional Banks are not confirming these new highs. Neither is Momentum or Relative Strength.

Over the past month, Bonds are up a bunch as the collapse in Interest Rates has resumed. We jumped on board this bond trade last month and so far it's working.

Meanwhile, a majority of U.S. stocks are actually down over the past month. While the S&P500, Dow Industrials and Nasdaq100 have gone on to make new highs, the NYSE Advance-Decline line (stocks only) did not, Small-caps did not, Dow Transports did not, and a majority of individual stocks did not. It's only a minority of names doing the work, particularly large-cap stocks and some higher dividend paying areas like REITs and Utilities.

When you run the numbers, most stocks in the U.S. are down over the past month, with negative average and median returns for the Russell3000 components. It's the bonds that are up and I think they're just getting started.

Today's chart focuses on the Intermarket Relationships we lean on to supplement our absolute price analysis. With rates rolling over again, are stocks and commodities...

As you guys know, we've had a much more defensive approach to the stock market over the past few weeks, especially compared to how bullish we had been for so long. There is a time to be big and aggressive and a time to be small and cash heavy. I believe we're currently in the latter of those two categories.

Here's the clip in full: