As Technicians we like to use the phrase “the bigger the base, the higher in space” when talking about breakouts from consolidations. Long periods of indecisive price action build a lot of potential energy that is then released once a stock breaks out of its range. This applies to any asset class on any timeframe because the psychology behind the pattern is exactly the same. The weight of the evidence continues to suggest we want to be long equities, so I’ve taken a look through the Nifty Smallcap 250 and identified some of the best bases that are either breaking out or look poised to over the intermediate-term.

Last summer I wrote a pretty controversial post about the fact that everyone just assumed retailers were all going bankrupt and buying their stocks was foolish. My argument at the time was the exact opposite: I felt that to not be buying retail stocks was irresponsible. Here is that post titled, "Is This Really The End Of Retail As We Know It?". There many stocks at the time that presented us with well defined risk with rewards exponentially greater than any risk we were taking. That worked out very well for us.

At this point, we're still hearing this short retail narrative from stock market bears digging for anything they can think of to not admit they were very wrong. You see, that's the difference between people who make money and those who don't: the ability to change your mind. Remember, we're not here to be right, we're here to make money. Check your ego at the door or this market is going to rip your face off, as it has done to many retail bears.

One of the great things I've experienced while getting All Star Options off the ground with JC has been putting pen to paper to really codify for myself how I view options trading. It's one thing to have a nebulous sort of idea of how I approach certain options strategies and when and how I might employ them, but it's quite another to sit down and really break down how each strategy should work, how it fails, my plans for taking profits and/or cutting losses and opportunities for position adjustments.

Instead of hoarding all this brainstorming for myself, we've decided to add it to the Education section of Allstarcharts.com so that you, too, can have easy reference points for thinking through your own trades.

As Technicians we like to use the phrase "the bigger the base, the higher in space" when talking about breakouts from consolidations. Long periods of indecisive price action build a lot of potential energy that is then released once a stock breaks out of its range. This applies to any asset class on any timeframe because the psychology behind the pattern is exactly the same. The weight of the evidence continues to suggest we want to be long equities, so I've taken a look through the Nifty Midcap 150 and identified some of the best bases that are either breaking out or look poised to over the intermediate-term.

In JC's All Star Charts May Monthly Conference call for subscribers, there was a theme that he consistently revisited: Bonds are going lower.

There's no need to over-complicate this stuff. We could waste time arguing about what increasing interest rates means for the stock market, or yield's implications on policy decisions in Washington, the effect to be felt in the housing market, or how retirees savings may or may not be effected. That might fill airtime on SHOUT!TV, but all we care about here is positioning ourselves to make money. Leave the intellectual debates to the talkers.

We're the doers, and we want to position ourselves for further downside in bonds.

I'm not the kind of guy that likes to give funny names to price patterns in the market. For me, it's more about the implications of that market behavior and less about what we call it. Today I want to take a look at US Treasury Bonds and what some price observers might refer to as a 'Head & Shoulders Top'.

The reason this is a popular pattern is because, as humans, it is easy for us to identify and relate to. Each of us have a pair of shoulders and a head that stands in between and above them. In today's chart, the Head and 2 Shoulders are fairly easy to point out. We're looking at the US Treasury Bond ETF $TLT:

Stocks in the United States aren't up because of what is happening in New York or Washington DC. They are up despite of what is going on in those places. Stocks in the U.S. are up because stocks all over the world are up. That's how this works.

So when we are trying to figure out whether the next move in stocks is higher or lower, and whether we should be buying them or selling them, we don't just want to look within U.S. borders. By doing that we're missing the bigger picture. We care less about the behavior of stocks in our own country and more about stocks as an asset class.

...then you simply have to get long The Granddaddy Oracle $ORCL here.

It appears Oracle has successfully digested the hit the stock took after it's most recent earnings report, and the stock is hanging just above the highs it set back in the year 2000! I could be wrong, of course, but I just don't see $ORCL holding around these levels for too much longer. There's just no way it recoups 2000 levels and then just stops here.

Earlier this week, JC pointed out that the software sector broke out to new all-time highs. I don't mean to keep harping on this, as you've no doubt read JC making this point over and over, but this sector making highs is simply not something we are likely to see if the overall market is pointing to a bear market.

The third largest component in the software index is Service Now, ticker $NOW. And we see an interesting opportunity developing.

Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts India Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the India Share Market. We take a look at all of the NSE Indexes and Sectors as well as some of our own custom indexes. At Allstarcharts we have become known around the world for the top/down approach to stocks. After we analyze each of the indexes and sectors and have identified where the strength and weakness lies, then we break it down to individual stock opportunities. By having momentum, relative strength and market trend in our favor, the probabilities of success increase dramatically.