It’s never easy to dream up content on weekends, and it’s 50% harder on long weekends. I pulled ten ETF charts that were kind of interesting and I’ve got a few things to say about each one.

The first one, and by far the most dull, is the good ol’ S&P 500 SPY. You may remember my suggestion that placing a butter knife on the screen will hide every pixel. Well, it’s still true.

Not so with emerging markets, however. They peaked near the start of this year, and they’ve been grinding their way lower for months. Don’t let recent strength fool you: this thing is in a downtrend.

A particular weak overseas market is Brazil's, which I’m pleased to see has completed its right-triangle pattern and respected the base of that triangle, even in the midst of last week’s rally.

After briefly being a precious metals zealot, I turned in my gold badge this summer and have flopped totally to cryptocurrency. I still look at precious metals however. Gold has probably exhausted its rally, but we’ll know on Tuesday, because it is at a very important resistance level as of Friday’s close.

Its comparison, silver, is in the same situation: lots of overhead supply, and recent strength has accomplished nothing except to bring the prices back to an important resistance level.

Thus, naturally, the precious metals miners are in precisely the same boat.

After the jobs report came out on Friday, bonds did an interesting thing: they broke their uptrend. It wasn’t anything dramatic, but there’s no doubt about it: the ascending channel in place since early May was broken.

In spite of this apparent “all clear” for interest rates to head higher, the banks didn’t react as you might expect. The regional banks, by way of KBE, are looking awfully similar to how they looked before COVID-19 took them out (see saucer top in pink).

As for commodities, where I’m especially bearish, we’ve had a big rally the last two to three weeks, but the downtrend is still intact over a multi-month period.

This is relevant to oil and, most specifically, XLE, which is far and away my largest options position (Oct. 15, 2021 put options). I expanded my position substantially during Thursday and Friday’s strength.