In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about the underperformance of the S&P500 relative to both Gold and US Treasury Bonds. The big question I think worth asking is whether these are massive distribution patterns in US Stocks on a relative basis, or if these are just consolidations within an ongoing uptrend that has been in place for years already? If you're in the bear camp / recession coming crowd, then you would expect these tops to complete themselves to the downside. If you think stocks go on to make new all-time highs (I do), then these are not massive distribution patterns but just healthy consolidation instead.

How often does someone tell you to Remember to Buy In November? Probably not as often as you'll hear Sell in May and Go Away!

But what does this all mean? What are these silly nursery rhymes all about and why should we care? Or should we even care at all?

You'll hear even some of the smartest and most experience market participants dismiss market seasonality altogether, almost as if they're too good for it. Maybe they're scared of things they don't understand, like my 2 year old cousin gets when she's confused. Or maybe seasonality is not as intellectually satisfying to them as say something like, fed policy or trump impeachments.

Either way, we do care about seasonal trends at All Star Charts because they help us with both identifying market trends and risk management. Here's what US Stock Market Seasonality means to me:

We've been bullish precious metals since the 4th quarter last year and even coming into 2019. We're not gold bugs, thank goodness. The risk vs reward was just skewed in favor of the long side, for a variety of reasons.

One of those was the fact that commercial hedgers were actually net long. They're never net long, and literally always hedged. For me, these Commitment of Traders reports are usually just noise, EXCEPT when they're at extremes. We want to pay attention when the rubber-band is stretched. And so we did, and Gold ripped!

Now we have the opposite scenario. Commercial Hedgers last month had on their largest net short position in history (345,145 contracts):

Think about how well everything is going this year! The S&P500 is up almost 20%. Bonds are up 22% and even Gold is up 17%! Heck Bitcoin has more than doubled! Can things get any better than this???

This is my Q4 2019 Playbook.

In our last Chart of The Week, we took a look at Pharmaceuticals to identify opportunities on the short side of that sector.

Today we're taking a step back and at the performance of Emerging Market equities as an asset class.

How are you liking the day to day swings in the market? Is it too much for you? Go through this checklist and make sure these questions are answered before moving forward.

Today, I thought it would add value to take a step back and see what's happening in the market bigger picture. They love distracting you with noisy headlines, but the way we approach it is: Whenever In Doubt, Zoom Out!

Here's how we see things in Stocks bigger picture:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday's Mystery Chart is one of my favorite charts right now, so thank you all for your feedback and participation.

It seems almost everyone was on the same page here, getting involved in some way, shape, or form on the long side.

With that as our backdrop, let's get into it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In late August we wrote about the weakness in Biotech and its coming breakdown on an absolute basis.

Now that we've gotten that breakdown, let's take a look at the entire Healthcare sector and identify what risks remain.

Stocks are still trying to break out of this massive range since early 2018. After some selling early this week, the range is still intact. I think this chart of the Global 100 Index tells the story best:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Today we're taking a look at one of the most important Emerging Markets out there, Brazil, on an absolute and relative basis.

Let's see what's going on there.