The Dow Jones Transportation Average has been one of the best leading indicators for the direction of markets over the past few years. This index peaked in late 2014, six months before the S&P500 put in its top. The Transportation Average also bottomed out in January 2016, the month before the S&P500 finally made its bottom. Moving forward, we want to continue to give this index the weighting it deserves.

With the recent underperformance out of this group, let's dive in and see what is going on underneath the surface. Is this the beginning of a major sell-off in Transports, which would lead the rest of the market lower? Or has this just been a correction within a strong uptrending market?

The way I learned it was that the Bond Market is smarter than the Stock Market. I've heard theories that it's because the Bond Traders are smarter than stock jockeys. Maybe it's because the Bond market is a lot bigger than the Stock Market. Maybe it's all a bunch of nonsense. Who knows? The way I like to approach it is simply to use them both to my advantage equally. They both play a role in the process. When we see evidence of risk appetite in the stock market, we want to see the bond market confirming that and vice versa. It's when one is suggesting one thing and the other is signaling something else that we start to question what is really going on here.

Today we're going to focus on 3 specific spreads that we want to be watching closely here as the Summer comes to an end.

Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.

We've been bullish towards US and Global Stocks once again since May. I still think this is an environment where we need to be buying weakness in stocks, not selling strength. The weight of the evidence is still pointing to an increased amount of risk appetite, not risk aversion. I ran through all 1000 charts of the S&P500 stocks on both weekly and daily timeframes and there are more good ones than bad ones. A lot more good ones, in fact. It's hard for me to fight that.

It's the middle of the summer and everything is quiet. Even the slightest bit of volatility brings in the panic. It's pretty amazing to watch. There are two schools of thought here. First, the historic short positions in S&P500 Volatility Index Futures have their monthly unwind, and stocks get adjusted accordingly. It's a volatility trade unwinding causing these 1 or 2 day spikes. But then the shorts come back in, make money for a period of time and then get swept out again, like this week. The cycle repeats. Now we move on again and volatility shorts crush it for the rest of the summer. That's thesis 1.

The other scenario is that there is a lot more squeeze behind this one and stocks can have a much bigger and longer adjustment. Take a look at the C.O.T. Reports. The numbers are outrageous. These Volatility shorts are natural buyers of volatility. It's scary when you think about it. But regardless, they stay short. It is what it is. Stocks continue to shake them off. But is this time different?

It's important to not only have a broader perspective on the market, but to look underneath the surface to see what is actually taking place. Precious Metals haven't exactly been my favorite asset class lately. It's for good reason too. There have been so many better places to be. It's not even close.

So today we ask the question: Is it time to be buying precious metals? 

My Gold workbook has 100 charts in it. You can find the entire thing regularly updated here.

Have you heard that story yet about how Amazon is destroying traditional retailers?

Let me ask you: Is this actually the case? Is this it for retailers? It's over?

Fortunately we have actual data that can help us answer this question. We're not making guesses based on estimates that will be revised 20 times over the next few quarters. As Technicians we know what is actually taking place between the buyers and sellers for these stocks. It's up to us to make the correct interpretations, of course, but that price data is the only reliable data in existence when it comes to retail stocks.

This is the infamous chart of the S&P Retail Index, which is equally weighted. So in this chart, Amazon does not represent a large percentage of the index. Each retail stock, about 94 of them, are weighted approximately the same across the board.

S&P Retail Index Fund $XRT

Every month I host a conference call for All Star Charts Premium Members where we discuss ongoing themes throughout the global marketplace as well as changes in trends where new positions would be most appropriate. This includes U.S. Stocks & Sectors, International Stock Indexes, Commodities, Currencies and Interest Rate Markets.

We've been bullish towards US and Global Stocks once again since May. I still think this is an environment where we need to be buying weakness in stocks, not selling strength. The weight of the evidence is still pointing to an increased amount of risk appetite, not risk aversion. What we're seeing in the bond market, however, is suggesting interest rates are still heading higher. The implications here for assets like Gold, Silver, Crude Oil and the US Dollar is also important to recognize.

I'll do my best to lay out my weight of the evidence conclusions and walk you step by step with how I got there! This month's Conference Call will be held on Wednesday July 19th at 7PM ET. Here are the Registration Details:

With Chemical Stocks breaking out to all-time highs, I can't think of a better time than now to do a deep dive analysis on what is going on in the space. You guys know how much I've liked the Chemicals for a while now. This has been a monster since early last year and then picked up again after last summer.

When we talk about the Materials Sector, Chemicals aren't exactly the first thing that might come to mind. But if you dig deep into the Materials space, it is clear that the Chemicals are the leadership sub-group within the broader sector.  Today we're going to dive in and see what is really going on here.

Today we're going to focus on what is taking place specifically in the Consumer Discretionary space. This is one of the largest sectors in the S&P500 with respects to the number of components, but the differences between all of the stocks in the group really stand out. While we are seeing some strength in Online Retail and some of the Homebuilders, the Apparel and Traditional Retailer space look terrible. So we don't just want to be buying this sector blindly. I think we need to pick and choose our spots.

In this report I wanted to do a deeper dive into Consumer Discretionary to try and determine the direction of the next major moves and how to best take advantage of it: