I've often said that by looking at individual stocks, you can get a deeper level of understanding of what's moving the overall equity markets.

I love to use the Consumer Discretionary vs Consumer Staples ratio as a way of gauging offense vs defense in the equity markets. The top panel shows the ratio of the XLY (Consumer Discretionary Sector SPDR) versus the XLP (Consumer Staples).

Market breadth at a high level essentially means market participation, so when the market is on the move, it tells you how many stocks are participating in the trend.

I love to ask interviewees if they had one chart to get a good read on the overall market environment, what would it be and why? My One Chart for today is IWM, the small cap ETF.

The chart of Health Care (XLV) is interesting first and foremost because it is a sector that has been remarkably resilient.

Crude oil went below zero dollars yesterday and eventually reached -$40 a barrel. I wanted to focus not necessarily on what this means for investors, but on what it means psychologically when something goes beyond a barrier you think is unbreachable.

Given the uncertainty in the world right now both in the markets and with life in general, I seem to be getting more questions than usual submitted to the mailbag for The Final Bar on StockCharts TV. We run a mailbag segment twice a week, and it’s really a great opportunity for me to help people along in their journey of navigating the markets.

FOMO is something we’ve talked about in investing for awhile now, especially after more than a decade of bull markets in stocks. FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out, is what is motivating investors to continue to buy stocks on the way up- this idea that stock prices could go to the moon and they don’t want to miss out …

In case you’ve missed it, we have recently found ourselves in a bear market environment.

The first quote I want to share with you about this market environment is,

“Bull markets are great, but they breed complacency. Bear markets can be energizing. Instead of fretting over the decline in your net worth think opportunistically about all of those bargains and the potential gains when inevitably a bull market returns.” – James B. Stewart

I wanted to share with you a quote from Jesse Livermore, which says “there is only one side of the market and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side”.