It feels good to be back in California. I just spent the past week in Texas, and before that I was in Toronto and Philly. I won't be leaving the west coast for a few months and I couldn't be more thrilled about it. I like it here.

When you force yourself to leave to computer screen as much as I do, you'll quickly learn the value in getting away and then coming back to reevaluate everything you previously thought before you left. There is a lot of data waiting for you once you're back at the desk. Is there enough data to change your mind or does it just confirm what you felt previously?

I spent last weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, looking through charts and enjoying the start of Football Season. At this point, College and Pro Football have each begun. Back when I lived in New York, this was my favorite time of the year: September and October. The weather is the best and everyone is back from their weekends in the Hamptons, Jersey Shore, Cape Cod or various other northeast vacation spots. The city gets going again. But so do the markets.

There are few people in this world who spend as much time with active traders as Mike Bellafiore, who has been a Managing Partner at SMB Capital since 2005. I think his unique perspective on trading and traders themselves is the perfect compliment to a lot of the other guests that we've had on the podcast. In this episode, Mike talks about some of the qualities that he's seen in the more successful traders as well as common mistakes he sees being made on the desk. Throughout the conversation, Mike gives us an inside look into the trading floor, how they separate traders into teams and the way the more experienced, proven traders help the younger up and comers. I really enjoyed this one!

A few weeks ago I took a look at the Precious Metals space from the top-down for Premium Members of Allstarcharts, concluding that despite stretched sentiment there's very little evidence that suggests being long this space over the intermediate or long-term. With that said, today I want to discuss the developments in this space since then that have shifted the short-term reward/risk in favor of the bulls.

Consumer Staples have been going up. Stocks like Costco, McCormick and Clorox have been ripping to new all-time highs. The Sysco in the Staples sector has even embarrassed Cisco in Technology. It's been a nice run. The question here, however, is whether or not the strength in Staples is evidence of a flight to safety and whether we should be concerned about the overall market? This is a very important question and I want to walk you through my thought process.

Fine. I get it. Businesses making political stances -- whether you agree with the stance or not -- rubs you the wrong way. And sure, aligning with a professional athlete at the center of a hot-button controversy only makes it more cringe-worthy for you. You're entitled to that opinion and I support your right to voice your displeasure. But for the love of all that is sacred in the world of trading, do.not.let.your.politics.or.emotions.get.in.the.way.of.making.profitable.economic.decisions.

Just don't do it.

After a more than 40% year-to-date and 60% 2-year decline, we've been eyeing Tata Motors on the long side for some mean reversion. For the last two months the stock has been range-bound, but the recent breakout has shifted the reward/risk in favor of the bulls over the short-term.

This week's "Chart of The Week" is exploring the potential 20% upside in Tata Motors, however, I want to use this post to explore the rest of the Automobile Sector for potential opportunities.

I think the overwhelming theme here is that there are a lot more stocks I want to buy than stocks I want to sell. Why do we need to over complicate this?

Another thing I'm seeing is the January highs as a reference point. The question is whether or not the market will be able to surpass that former resistance, proving there is more demand than supply there, or if it's the other way around? Are there, in fact, more sellers up here than buyers? We can see this key January pivot point in most of the major indexes: S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Transportation Average and Russell3000. Can we get through those highs like the Small-caps, Mid-caps and Nasdaq already have?

I believe the answer is in the components. How are individual stocks reacting to those former highs? Are they breaking through resistance or running into sellers and rolling over?

For us, the big question going into the weekend was whether or not the most recent leg higher in U.S. Stocks is the beginning of something bigger, a breakout of epic proportions, or just a major whipsaw that will lead to further selling into September and October, two of the most historically volatile months of the year.

We see various crowds. On one hand, you have the bearish cult who for many reasons have fought this uptrend the whole time. Whether they just missed the last couple of years in stocks or, worse in some cases, missed the entire decade, they've been very wrong. There's even a group who wishes harm on the United States and elsewhere around the world, just because they disagree with decisions being made in D.C. They certainly don't want stocks to rise. And then you have another group, who is indifferent and is just looking for a favorable risk vs reward shorting opportunity and they think this is finally it.

From time to time, a slowly developing opportunity presents itself and in doing so gives you multiple ways to profit -- while also incrementally reducing your risk as time goes along. This type of situation is presenting itself currently in Marathon Oil $MRO.

Continental Resources $CLR has been consolidating in a range just below 4-year highs, and recent price action has brought it to a level where I like our odds for an income trade.

This has been the big theme throughout this bull market: Money flowing into Consumer Discretionary stocks at a more rapid rate than towards Consumer Staples. By our work, this is characteristic of an uptrend in U.S. stocks and has been a great tell for a long time. You guys following along for the past few years know that well. We even nicknamed the Staples underperformance as, "The Most Bullish Chart On Earth" (See May 2017).