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For years, Momentum was basically code for US growth, big tech and high-flyers. But 2025 is rewriting that script.

This year has been all about international equities.

While US indexes have chopped sideways, many global ETFs are quietly making new 52-week highs relative to the S&P 500.

The Intl Momentum Factor ETF $IMTM tells the story of what's been unfolding in abroad and where the strength is emerging.

The ETF is breaking out to new all-time highs, driven by Financials and Industrials, which make up 34% and 18% of the...

The Mexican peso is the “blue-chip” emerging market currency. It’s long been a favorite for hedge fund carry trades—often paired with the yen—due to Mexico’s relatively high interest rates and liquid FX market.

Beyond its appeal to speculators, the peso has also served as a key risk-on currency—often leading and participating alongside a broad base of international equities and commodities.

Following the election of Claudia Sheinbaum in June of 2024, the Mexican Peso and Mexican stocks took a hit, turning into laggards on the international stage. 

It was clear for those paying attention that the market did not feel optimistic about President Sheinbaum’s economic leadership. 

But the tides are shifting. With a weakening dollar, the Mexican Peso is finding its footing, and Mexican equities are starting to improve in a...

Recently, I had the pleasure of joining Michael Martin on his Trader Mindset podcast for a deep and honest conversation about what it really takes to trade in volatile markets.

One of the biggest takeaways I shared — and something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately — is that these days, I’m more focused on finding strategies to keep my head on straight than I am on searching for new trading strategies with some theoretical edge.

Because here’s the hard truth: without a clear, steady mindset, even the best strategy in the world will eventually fail me.

Of course, Michael and I also dug into how volatility — especially as measured by the VIX — shapes the playing field for traders, particularly those of us in the options world. We explored how elevated VIX levels impact trade selection, timing, and risk management, and why high volatility environments demand a different, more nimble approach.

One of the key themes we kept circling back to was the psychological side of trading. Because let’s face it: when the market’s flying all over the place and my P&L is jumping around just as fast, my internal state can become my biggest...

US equities are officially the laggards of the world.

The S&P 500 is underperforming just about every stock market around the globe this year.

After four months of steady underperformance, a growing list of international indexes are making new 52-week highs relative to the US.

While these ratios might be stretched over the short-term, when you zoom out, they are taking the shape of primary trend reversals.

All this tells us is to expect more leadership from international stocks in the future. I think we should get used to a global market of stocks that is no longer dominated by the United States.

And this is great news. Participation broadening around the world simply means more investment opportunities for us.

So I’m all about international these days. The first watchlist and chartbook I’m looking at most mornings is our international ETF universe. 

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ricardo Sarraf @nullcharts

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in USO.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

📌 The most significant insider buy today comes from Tesla $TSLA, where Airbnb $ABNB co-founder and Tesla board member Joe Gebbia stepped up with a $1 million purchase.

This marks the first insider purchase of Tesla stock in roughly five years.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 28, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 Over in clean energy, Enphase Energy $ENPH got a confidence boost from the top, as President and CEO Badri Kothandaraman picked up $185,000 worth of stock, backing a potential turnaround in solar.

📌 Finally, Pzena Investment Management filed 13Gs revealing initial 5.10% stakes in both Skyworks Solutions $SWKS and Spectrum Brands $SPB.

Starbucks set to report tonight and if you aren't nervous you haven't been paying attention. 

Shares of the worlds largest coffee shop are trading at levels first hit in 2019, a depressing run of mediocrity that has included 4 CEOs, a national controversy over the use of store bathrooms and the COVID lockdown. The lockdowns were particularly notable for Starbucks because ~20% of its revenues (and much less of its earnings) are generated in the Chinese market, which was something of a career-long hobbyhorse of longtime leader Howard Schultz. 

The company pulled all guidance last fall, one of the first orders of business under CEO Brian Niccol. Suffice it to say the business outlook hasn't gotten more transparent since October.

Same store sales were likely down in the US last quarter, though likely with improved tickets but weaker traffic. FWIW analysts are looking for EPS of 50c on about $8.8b of revenue. There will be currency noise and, as just mentioned, Starbucks itself isn't giving any guidance and has no particular incentive to stretch numbers or paint a rosy international picture. Niccol arrived with a well-earned reputation and he's...

Roper Technologies $ROP is out with another double beat, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the stock.

The industrial tech firm topped revenue and EPS expectations again, continuing its track record of solid execution. 

Revenue hit $1.88 billion, and EPS reached $4.78, both above consensus. 

On paper, this was a textbook beat...

But the market response? Brutal. 

Shares fell over 1%, extending a trend of negative earnings reactions. The stock has been punished after 6 of its last 7 earnings reports.

At this point, it’s not about the numbers—it’s about expectations. 

Investors seem to be pricing in perfection, and anything less—even a clean beat—is getting sold. 

Whether it’s valuation concerns, slowing organic growth, or just poor sentiment, the message is clear: Wall Street isn’t buying the story, no matter how consistent it looks.

This is textbook earnings punishment.

So what else did we learn from yesterday's earnings reactions? Let’s dive into the details.

*...

Spotify is down 8% pre-market on missing the EPS estimate for Q4. The subscription numbers were good with monthly usage and premium subscriber numbers coming in better than expected. The guidance for FY subs was light, which seems more on the side of prudent than a red flag.

As I wrote about ahead of earnings, $SPOT had become a crowded long as shares tacked on 20% and $100 heading into the earnings release.

There are companies you want to own for a steady earnings stream. Spotify isn't one of them. 

SPOT into the quarter with too many people needing a huge beat. I was hoping for something more like this. 

Here's how I'm planning to trade it for the Macke Consumer portfolio.

Today's number is... 50

After 43 consecutive days, the S&P 500 has risen above the 50 level on the daily RSI.

Here’s the chart:

 Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The black line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
• The green and red line in the middle panel represents the daily Relative Strength Index (RSI) for the S&P 500. When the line is green, it indicates that the daily RSI is above 50, while a red line signifies that the daily RSI is below 50.
• The black line in the bottom panel shows how many consecutive days the daily RSI (14) has remained below the 50 level.

The Takeaway: The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a momentum indicator that measures the speed and change of price movements. Recently, the daily RSI for the S&P 500 has climbed back above the 50 level after remaining below it for 43 consecutive days. This marks the longest period that the RSI has...

We continue to see small caps stuck deep in the red, while large caps remain firmly in the green.

This isn’t surprising — it’s part of a well-established secular trend — but it’s worth highlighting again.

Small Caps ($IWM) look terrible, and there's little hope for a turnaround anytime soon. Just look at how brutally the small-cap ratio has been crushed.

Even with money flowing out of growth stocks — the very names that drive the large-cap indexes — small caps are still breaking to new lows.

If they couldn’t outperform when tech was getting hit, what are the odds they’ll ever outperform?

It's a bleak outlook for America's small stocks.

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While markets have been volatile over the past few weeks, these turbulent periods often present the best opportunities to identify future leaders.

When the market’s under pressure, I’m always looking for the names that refuse to go down.

That’s what relative strength looks like.

It’s called the Beachball Effect.

Picture a beachball underwater — no matter how hard you push it down, it just keeps fighting to pop back up.

And when the pressure lifts, these are the names that tend to rip first — and rip the hardest.

To help visualize this, we built a table combining two factors:

🔹Stocks currently in a bullish momentum regime...

The bulls are saying its global rotation, and the bears are saying it won’t work without US stocks.

Both takes make sense. But, they’re just takes. 

Here’s where we are…

Stock markets around the world experienced fierce selloffs back in March. 

Then in April, this bearish action was followed by some of the most historic rallies in recent history.

There was broad participation to the downside. And now we’re seeing the same in the opposite direction. We’re in the middle of a synchronized global rebound rally.

And every country, region, factor, sector, and industry group looks different. They all come with their own unique characteristics in terms of how much they sold off, how resilient they were, and now, how strong they are, measured by the bounce.

So, while some things obviously look better than others, and some groups still look...

Spotify ("The Swedish Netflix") reports, essentially while we are sleeping tonight. The Podcast King is expected to to report revenue growth of about 20% at $4.6b and earnings of $2.52-ish or more, which is a growth rate too large to really delve into here. Not because it isn't impressive but  because I don't think it matters all that much what Spotify reports as much as how they guide.

Spotify isn't cheap for the best reasons. 1. The company is now printing money and utterly indispensable to ~265 million people worldwide. 2. There isn't (yet) a tariff on steaming stuff 3. Spotify is a global brand, generating more than half its revenues from "other countries" (there are apparently consumers in non-America, I'm having a team look into it).

While we're pie-charting let's add this:

That's Spotify's revenue breakdown on advertisements vs subscribers. Combine those two ChatGPT-generated charts and my hand-written efforts and you know why Wall Street was comfortable bidding SPOT up 33% YTD while the rest of the world burns:

• Ads are flaky but Subs stick around. This is a big part of a lot of my investment thesis this year. I think...

Do you remember when The Economist magazine cover had a rocket ship covered in United States dollars last year?

They said the United States was "The envy of the world."

It was so cringe...

The dollar got blasted over the next several months, and the U.S. stock market had its worst quarter in decades relative to the rest of the world.

Like any other type of market analysis, fading magazine covers is more of an art than a science.

We don't want to fade a trend just because there's a magazine cover.

The dollar was extremely overbought in the prior example, and the COT positioning tipped us off to a potential move in the opposite direction.

We waited for the market to confirm our bias, managed our risk, and made a ton of money.

Fast forward to today, and the latest Barron's magazine cover highlighted a stack of Gold bars and said:

"Investors are loading up on the metal as a haven in chaotic times. How long can it last?"

This comes as Gold futures are running into...

As the dust settles on Liberation Day the Street is starting to pick through the rubble and getting long stocks just in case the world doesn't end.

Consider On Holdings, the Swiss shoe and athletic concern. Shares are popping on a down day thanks to a couple upgrades. The gist of both is something I wrote about the company last March; On is taking market share, expanding across the globe and generally speaking the hottest brand going, at the moment.

That's the view of me, Citi, UBS and about 75% of the fashionable people I run into at our over-priced health club. It's also something noticed by Mrs. JC Parets, and Mrs Jeff Macke; two solid sources on such matters.

On vs Skechers

Being hot is the ultimate tailwind for a consumer brand. Given the headwinds of the moment (tariffs based on trades between the US and anywhere else), it doesn't hurt On to be a Swiss based company doing a lot of business in Europe and on the other side of moving a good portion of production from China to Indonesia and Vietnam.

Skechers,...

This weekend, I shared a story about a young woman who asked me how she could set herself up for future financial success. I told her that the best education comes from living life fully—scars, stories, and all. Your response to that post was overwhelming, and I’m grateful for the thoughtful feedback. Today, I want to highlight one reader’s note that struck a chord and dive deeper into what it means to embrace our “life education.”

A reader, Julius, wrote to me with this reflection:

I agree with you about life. From my experience and perspective, the greatest education doesn’t come from school, books, courses, or TED talks but from living life to the fullest…

As you stated, the best education comes from the life you have lived and the scars to show for it. Then you’re left with the story to tell about it. Years ago, I stopped thinking of those scars as mistakes, failures, or regrets. Instead, I think of them all as outcomes…

Had I kept beating myself up over all my so-called mistakes and failures,...

The chart we are analyzing is the US Dollar Index (Monthly) going back 30 years.  

Pay close attention to the solid blue measured move as that represents the largest correction since the Dollar's bull run in 2008. 

Additionally, if you go back beyond 2008, you will see that the 'solid blue arrow' has been very harmonic, representing almost every move lower.  The other arrows are simply harmonics of the blue.  Additionally, notice the 14 period RSI.  We are approaching/at a VERY key support level on the RSI.  Finally, we hit the .382 from the USD all time low and have a classic polarity play all at the same level. 

Technically, the bounce in the USD dollar makes sense.  

Is this the beginning of a move higher for the USD or a "dead cat bounce?" Time will tell.  The 'monthly' candle coming into this level is big and w/ a lot of volume - this warns this level will give away, eventually.  And, right below it, is a projection target at 95.

In this 'new world order' (debatable) currency flows are everything.  Pay attention to the USD and the heavyweights out there - the Pounds, the Swissy, the Yen...