Sometimes the greatest things in the world are right there in front of you.

Of all the charts I look at and indicators that we include in our process, Consumer Staples relative to the S&P500 has to be one of the most valuable. And for that matter, one of the more simpler tools to use.

Consumer Staples are the things we're theoretically going to buy even if there's a recession or the economy is doing poorly. No matter how bad things get, we're still going to drink beer, smoke cigarettes, brush our teeth, wash our dishes and so forth. Those stocks tend to outperform when the rest of the stock market is falling. Some of the top holdings of the S&P Consumer Staples Index include Colgate-Palmolive, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

These stocks represent consumer staples and tend to pay higher dividends and are less volatile than the overall market. We call that "lower beta", because it makes us sound smarter.

Anyway, you can see in this chart how helpful the relative strength in staples has been in identifying trends and turning points:

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Thank you to everyone who responded to this week's mystery chart.

Most people were sellers of this one, while some were staying away fearing a whipsaw.

With that as our backdrop, let's take a look at this dumpster fire.

You guys want to hear a funny story?

Let me take you back to simpler times back in 2006 when you used to hear things like, "Real Estate only goes up" and "God only made so much land". Heck, you may have even said those things yourself.

But it was the brilliant market timers at the ETF companies that really stole the show. The iShares U.S. Home Construction Fund $ITB launched on May 1, 2006, and here's what it did immediately after that:

Meanwhile, the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF $XHB launched on January 31, 2006, and here's what it did immediately after that:

This week on the podcast I'm thrilled to have Quint Tatro join me as our guest. I've been following his work for a long time and have always appreciated his technical approach to managing portfolios at his advisory firm Joule Financial. This was a great conversation where Quint walks us through how he got to Technical Analysis in the first place and how he applies those methods on a daily basis. We went over the overall stock market and how he wants to overweight International Stocks and Emerging markets heading into 2020. He also likes Gold bigger picture here and the mining stocks that come a long with it. I really enjoyed this one. Give it a listen!

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This is a quick follow-up to our last two posts on Canada (September 16 & December 10), updating our views and adding any new trade ideas for today's environment.

In this special episode of The Money Game, Phil asks me about any new trends I’m seeing for 2020. I give him both the sexy answer, that everyone seems to want to hear, and the real answer. I think this was a quick but valuable conversation about US and foreign markets, US Sectors like Technology and Financials and even what we see coming for Bitcoin. We had good timing on this conversation as we’re just getting starting the new year.

Every quarter we put out a Quarterly Playbook for our Premium Members, with our three-part Q1 2020 note being published just now.

In this note, we want to outline one of the most informative charts from each of the three parts.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.

As we head into 2020, we start from scratch with our Q4 playbook and outline our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit in the quarter (and year) ahead.

Part 1 of this playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates.

Part 2 of this playbook will delve deeper into Indian Equities, going sector by sector to identify the trends that matter.

Part 3 of this playbook will outline the individual stocks we want to be buying and selling within the context of today's environment.

The US Stock Market Indexes are all hitting new highs. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who reads the work we put out.

Isn't it nice when we just let the data dictate our actions?

Good music and clean charts. It works.

So today we're going to focus on a new sector that I think is just getting started: Industrials. Take a look at the fresh breakout from its 2018-2019 consolidation:

Click on charts to zoom in

See how this one is resolving? Consolidations tend to resolve themselves in the direction of the underlying trend. This one here is apparently no different.