Sean and I have known each other for over a decade but there are still things he's interested in learning about my experiences. In this video, Sean asks me how playing baseball made me a better trader or investor. The key takeaways here are:

1) Hard Work and Mental Toughness

2) Preparation and knowing what you will do under any circumstance

3) Learning how to lose. If you fail 70% of the time on the diamond, you get inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Being able to take a loss and move on is part of the path to success.

The All Star Charts team is not wildly bullish on US stocks here, though the consensus is that eventually we resume higher out of some sideways action that might take a few months to work through. That said, there is one sector we feel will lead us higher when the time is right and we've got a candidate stock that offers us a good opportunity to express our mildly bullish stance while keeping our risks manageable.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

One of the topics I spoke about during my Chart Summit presentation on breadth last month was the relative performance of Equally-Weighted versus Cap-Weighted Indexes.

I always hear that the market cannot go higher on an absolute basis if the Equally-Weighted S&P 500 is underperforming the Cap-Weighted.

So is that the case? Let's take a look.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

It's been about three weeks since I wrote this post looking at breadth across various Equity markets since January 2018.

JC wrote a post today about "The Cards We've Been Dealt" which references some of these stats, so I wanted to update some of them and highlight another way we use them to measure breadth.

We have to play the cards we're dealt. Like it or not, this is the environment we're forced to invest in, but only if you want to. You don't have to invest. Cash has been a viable option for 6 months. It's worked out great. Most stocks, sectors, US and International Indexes are still below their January 2018 highs. I can give you the exact numbers like we provide for our Institutional Customers, but just take my word for it. It's not even close. We've been in a 14-month sideways range, or downtrend, depending on who you ask. Either way, it's not an uptrend for most stocks.

Now, this 14-month nothing burger comes within the context of a major bull market in stocks, that arguably started in 2016. After a monster run throughout 2016 and 2017, the stock market, both U.S. and abroad, has consolidated those gains. It seems perfectly normal, and well deserved, if you ask me.

Due to a scheduling conflict around the annual CMT Symposium in New York, JC and I will be doing our monthly conference call a little later in the cycle this month. But have no worries, I'll provide some updates below on positions we have open with April options that may need some attention or adjustments.

We've been erring on the long side of stocks for the last 6 weeks, taking trades where the reward/risk is heavily skewed in our favor, but are still seeing mixed evidence regarding the market's ability to make new highs in the short-term.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

I received a ton of great responses via Twitter and email for this week's Mystery Chart, so thank you for that.

Most said you'd be buying the breakout at current levels or on a successful retest, but a few skeptics were staying away. Let's get into the actual chart.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

The Equally-Weighted Semiconductor Index recently made new all-time highs, while the cap-weighted sits a few below its 2018 highs. What's next for Semis? That's what I hope to answer in this post.

Relative Rotation Graphs are some of the best visual tools in Technical Analysis today. In this episode, I am thrilled to have the creator of RRG, Julius de Kempenaer, on to talk about what first inspired him to create this tool and what some of the best practices are for market participants. I discovered RRG about 6-7 years ago after watching a colleague use it during a presentation at Bloomberg in New York City. As a technician, I use charts to visualize data to help identify trends and manage risk. RRG is more of a rotation tool that can be used for sectors, country indexes and currencies. By using a combination of Relative Strength and Momentum data, the RRG rotates clockwise from Leading to Weakening, to Lagging, to Improving and then back again to Leading. In this discussion, Julius walks us through how he likes to use it and explains its construction. If you're interested at all in sector rotation and relative strength, this tool is for you!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Palladium. For the last 3 years, nobody cared a lick as it nearly quadrupled in price. Over the last month however, I'd seen more mentions* as the price trend accelerated than I did for the entire 3-year trend beforehand.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and eliminate the x and y-axes and and all labels eliminated to minimize bias. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. It can even be inverted or a custom index.

The point here is to not guess what it is, but instead to think about what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?