The Dow Jones Industrial Average is my favorite of all of the stock market indexes. You know how many charts we look at every week at our shop. So with the plethora of price data that comes across my desk, it's really the simplicity of the 30 stocks that represent the Dow that makes me appreciate the index for what it is.

The Dow is a price weighted index where the highest priced stocks represent a larger portion of the index. For this reason, it often gets dismissed in favor of the "broader-based", market cap-weighted S&P500. Some like myself even prefer the Russell3000 index which is really representative of the US Stock market. Funny enough, as different as these indexes may be on paper, that's why they play the game. Here are what the 3 of these things look like in real life. 

Most regular readers of mine know I'm a big fan of the "hundred-dollar-roll."

If you aren't familiar with this phenomenon, essentially, its the tendency for traders and investors to be distracted by a big, sexy, (but ultimately meaningless) round number. And 100 is the most common of the big round numbers that captures the fancy of speculators new and old.

And this phenomenon isn't new. In fact, in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (the greatest trading book ever written, in my opinion), Jesse Livermore mentions trading stocks as they approach 100, 200, or 300 was one of his favorite strategies as he could very often count on that large number acting as a magnet for buy orders -- which then eventually results in further follow thru for several more points beyond the round number. "There is nothing new on Wall Street," he'd say.

This is all on my mind as a household name and a darling of Wall Street and Main Street emerges from a nice bounce off its 50-day moving average and approaches 100...

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.

A lot of you were leaning toward the long side, with different approaches and stops. Some were neutral, but none of you were getting short.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

A few weeks ago I wrote about Shippers, Casinos, and some Construction/HomeBuilding Related stocks being some of the weakest areas of the market. About the message the market would be sending if those stocks couldn't see downside follow-through after breaking down.

So let's check in on those "shitty" stocks.

These are the registration details for the monthly conference call held for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Wednesday April 17th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call:

This week we have a special guest on the podcast: Eddy Elfenbein of Crossing Wall Street and PM for the $CWS Exchange Traded Fund. This is a show about Technical Analysis so I think it's important to also include some of the masters of Fundamental Analysis to tell us how they find charts and technicals helpful in their process. Eddy is one of the original Financial Bloggers and I have a ton of respect for him and his work. He is a pioneer in both social media and portfolio management. I love how he explains his appreciation for Intermarket Analysis and Relative Strength as useful tools throughout his process. As many of you know, these two are near and dear to my heart so it's cool to see the Fundamental community embracing them in similar ways. This was a fun conversation!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Healthcare Providers quickly went from hero to zero in Q4 of 2018 after a failed breakout and bearish momentum divergence, but we're beginning to see signs of a potential mean-reversion over the short-term.

Let's start with Healthcare relative to the S&P 500, which has been unable to find its footing since topping 5 months ago. Prices have now retraced 61.8% of their 2018 rally, which may offer some short-term support and transition the trend from down to sideways.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

The weakest subsector within Healthcare has been Healthcare Providers, but a ratio of the two recently confirmed a bullish momentum divergence and failed breakdown by closing back above 1.85. As long as prices are above that level, our risk is well-defined on the long side for a...

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?

What does it mean when you hear, "Overhead Supply"? How does that help anyone?

The market is a beautiful thing. It's driven by supply and demand dynamics, or buyers and sellers, based on reasons that we don't need to know. I've noticed that the majority of market participants like to worry about the "why?". We choose to worry about the "Where, When and For How Long?". It seems like a much better use of our time, particularly if our only goal is to make money. We're not interested in writing gossip columns.

For me, overhead supply is when there are an overwhelming amount of sellers relative to the amount of buyers around a certain price. Sometimes you get the smartass in the room that says, "Well JC for every buyer there must be a seller". Yes, dummy, but there aren't an equivalent amount of willing buyers and sellers and every price. That's why stocks move.

Are you guys using Koyfin yet? If not, I suggest you start.

Koyfin is my favorite new financial data and analytics platform. It seems like every day I learn about a new feature that helps me throughout my process. It's so easy to use and everyone I speak to loves the product.

Full disclosure, we're investors in the company. But we're investors for a reason. The product is amazing and I believe founder Rob Koyfman is creating a ton of value to our community, and not just technical analysts but everyone.

Last week I was at the CMT Symposium in New York and had a chance to chat with Rob so he could explain exactly what Koyfin is and some of the new features that they will be rolling out this quarter.

Check it out:

One of the most important parts of my process in selecting potential options trades is to assess the current volatility situation. Everything else being equal, I like to put on trades that position myself for volatility to revert to its mean. In other words, if volatility is high and therefore options prices are high, I want to express my directional trade in such a way that it might also benefit from volatility falling back to "normal" levels. Conversely, when volatility is low, I want any position I consider to benefit from a rise in volatility -- if there is one.

There are no free lunches on Wall Street, nor in options trading. But betting on volatility reverting to the mean might be one of the closest things to it. The trick is in the timing.

Of all the most liquid ETFs I track, the one that has been the quietest lately -- in terms of price action and volatility in options pricing -- is the Retail Sector ETF $XRT. In fact, volatility in $XRT is currently at the lowest levels last seen in 2018 before the Christmas selloff. This has given me a wild idea...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

The market remains a “hot mess", so we’re looking under the surface at breadth and risk appetite measures to identify clues as to the potential direction that this 15-month range will resolve itself.

Today I want to look at one of those measures, Consumer Discretionary stocks vs Consumer Staples.

If you're a long-only fund manager that believes the market is headed higher, you're going to be in more aggressive areas of the market like Discretionary. If you believe the market is headed lower or isn't going to do much, you're going to be in the lower beta, often higher dividend Consumer Staple stocks.

So what's happening in these sectors right now?

The Equal-Weight Consumer Discretionary vs Equal-Weight Consumer Staples continues to struggle with a flat 200-day moving average and confluence of support/resistance, but just made new 6-month highs this week. While this chart still work to do to confirm an intermediate-term uptrend, this is extremely constructive action and is suggesting that risk appetite among market participants is beginning to pick up.

Click on chart to enlarge...