From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

On May 1st, we wrote an update called "Canada or Cantada" going through the major sectors/indexes to provide a view on how we wanted to approach Canadian Equities.

As we can see, there are more uptrends than downtrends from a structural perspective. Tactically however, most of these are not at levels where we want to be initiating new positions or have a lot of conviction. After strong moves since December, they need some consolidation to digest those gains and set up for a sustained move higher.

Another thing to note is that the more defensive areas of the market like REITs and Staples have the clearest structural uptrends of the group. They make up a smaller portion of the market, but I think it's still an interesting signal about market participants' risk appetite and outlook for Interest Rates.

Additionally Energy and Materials account for roughly 30% of the index and remain a headwind, so without rotation into those names I think it'll be tough for the TSX Composite to break out to the upside.

They don't need to be...

Life can be simple or you can make things complicated and noisy. It's up to you.

What business are you in? The business of trying to make money in the market or the business of making and/or consuming noise?

I was out in Greece on my honeymoon for a couple of weeks last month, but I was keeping an eye on what was going on. I love the market and I enjoy observing human behavior. So why should I completely shut myself off from something I like doing?

Now that I am married, I would very much like to keep my wife happy, and I also think it's important to get away (see here). So appropriately I shut things off and enjoyed my time in, what are now officially, my favorite islands in the world. It was funny because some of the locals in the Cyclades Islands were telling me how much they wanted to go to the Caribbean. I was like, "Naw man, stay here. Trust me!"

What I noticed from far far away is how noisy the market place can be if you...

In this post, we're going to outline the most significant charts/updates since April's post.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Stocks showing relative strength in this environment remain on our radar since the list of them has shrunk day by day over the last month.

For our Institutional Clients, we provide more tactical trade ideas or "plus-ones" that don't necessarily fit a broader theme but are still an attractive opportunity worth exploring.

Today I want to share one of those ideas from a subsector of the market that may surprise you...Retail.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Wall Street is a game of relative performance and we each are tasked with our own mandates/constraints in managing our portfolios.

The good news is that even when the market is a hot mess on an absolute basis, there are still plenty of ways to find performance within the context of those constraints.

If you need to have most of your capital allocated most of the time, then your focus is on either avoiding/shorting areas of relative weakness and owning areas of relative strength.

If you have the flexibility to raise cash and go to the beach or have short exposure on your books, that works too.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

At the beginning of May, we put out a note about the failed breakout in many of the major indexes and why a more cautious stance was warranted for US and global equities. The divergences we were seeing slowly add up had finally been confirmed by price and we raised cash and stepped aside.

Since then, patience has paid if you let it.

Lack of trend, not just in the US, but globally, has been THE theme.

A month later, let's look at what's changed since then and if our gameplan needs to be adjusted at all.

India's recent rally has reaccelerated its trend of outperformance relative to the rest of the Emerging Market space.

In this post, I want to outline two charts we use to track this trend and another that helps explain why it's happening.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

One of the hardest things to do in life and in markets is admitting you don't know. But when you're only in the market to make money, and not to be right, saying I don't know can often be the best answer.

That's why I put out a post titled "Relatively...Confused" just two days ago because when I go through my chartbooks I see extended themes that are not offering great reward/risk opportunities right now.

Elections, as with other major world events, introduce a lot of new information that market participants need to digest. This often causes increased volatility as expectations are adjusted and buyers and sellers battle to establish a trend.

So far this week we've seen an expansion in the intraday trading ranges, but not much resolution in terms of overall trend direction.

Here's what we're keeping an eye on.

We've spoken about the lack of trend in the Major Indexes for a while now, but another theme that's becoming more and more pervasive is the weakness in Tech stocks.

Let's see how we're going to approach it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

There are trends people tend to pick up on indirectly, usually by looking at individual stock charts or ETFs on an absolute basis, seeing the relative strength/weakness, and connecting the dots.

See something in one chart; it may not be all that special. See it in a lot of charts from the same area of the market...you're usually onto something.

That's the indirect way, but if we look at a trend directly, we can get a better feel for the exact strength of that underlying trend/theme.

In this post, I want to highlight a few trends that I know people are aware of, but may not realize their severity.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

We've been writing about the lack of trend in the Major Indices and highlighting some relative strength in places like Software and Insurance, but overall signals remain mixed.

This morning I set out to write another post about areas showing relative strength, hoping to find a clean theme that the most actionable stock setups fit within.

What I found can be boiled down to the length of two tweets.

"Going through the S&P 1500 I see a number of actionable names on the long side, but they don't all fit a theme. They're all from different areas of the market. Where there are themes I see a lot of extended names and unattractive entries."

and

"I can see that the path of least resistance is higher in a lot of names, but that doesn't mean that current levels offer an attractive entry."

Great themes, but no great way of executing...