From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We'll...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: The rally off of the mid-March stock market lows has equity investors feeling better. Without upside follow through (in terms of price and/or risk appetite), moods could quickly sour. So far, evidence of follow through has been lacking. Taking a longer-term perspective, the pessimism that was seen earlier this year seems more consistent with frustration that the stocks one owns aren’t going up rather than a deep-seated desire to reduce exposure and avoid equities altogether. Equity funds continue to see inflows, stocks are expensive relative to earnings and household exposure to equities has remained at historically high levels. Without these conditions unwinding, short-term mood swings may be even more sensitive to price changes than they normally are.                 

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Commodities Catching Attention

Commodities were the best performing asset class in 2021 and yet investors hardly noticed. Commodity-related ETF’s actually experienced...

This is the video recording of our April 6, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

Demystifying the world of cryptocurrencies can be a taunting task.

Even before you dive into the emerging world of defi, web 3.0, and NFTs, what seems like the relatively simple Bitcoin network has a hidden underworld of complexity and nuance.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be bought without the necessity of a financial intermediary, like an exchange or crypto broker.

Instead, you can complete transactions on-chain, transferring capital and funds to individuals across the world utilizing the computing power of a peer-to-peer network.

These transactions, in turn, are validated and secured by miners, who dedicate computing power via solving complicated mathematical problems. Once solved, a hash is created.

The hash rate, in formal terms, is the number of hash operations done in a given period of time.

Less formally, the hash rate essentially measures the security and health of any proof-of-work cryptocurrency.

There's no better way for those wanting a deeper dive than reading the 2008 Bitcoin white paper.

Volatility is not done with us yet. It ain't going down without a fight! At the time I'm writing this, $VIX is +15% on the day and +31% since Monday's close.

This has me back on the hunt for some premium selling opportunities.

And an ETF on our radar that checks the boxes of elevated premium, potential rangebound trading action, and a good fade opportunity is the $XLI Industrials ETF.

Check out this chart of $XLI:

Before we dive into today’s note, we have an update on the Elon-versus-Twitter saga that’s been unfolding all week.

On Tuesday evening, Musk finally filed the appropriate Form 13D we were waiting for, reflecting his intentions as an “active” shareholder.

This is the video recording of our April 5th Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

King dollar is sitting perched upon its throne. But the floor beneath it is beginning to crumble.

The rally in the US dollar index $DXY isn’t as strong as today's fresh highs would suggest. In fact, when we dig beneath the surface, the dollar is only trending higher against a few currencies over shorter timeframes, while underperforming the vast majority.

Conveniently, the handful of currencies the USD continues to best are the most heavily weighted components of the US dollar index.

This lack of internal strength can be seen pretty much anywhere outside of the chart of DXY itself. Whether we're looking at our USD trend summary table, our custom USD advance-decline line, or the individual crosses themselves, it all suggests the current trend in the dollar lacks support. 

Let’s take a look.

Our USD trend summary table illustrates both the broad weakness as well as those critical areas of strength that are driving the current uptrend in the DXY:  

...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

One of the overarching themes since we launched the Inside Scoop and began writing about The Hot List each day has been the relentless interest in commodity stocks.

Coincidentally, these same stocks have exhibited incredible relative strength over this time period. It’s already been a few months, but we’re not seeing any signs of this trend slowing down.

We discussed a lot of these names during last week’s live strategy session. Click here to watch the replay and to download the accompanying chartbook.

And be sure to join us tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. ET for this week’s live strategy session.

Today, we’re going to talk about some new long setups that we’re getting involved with.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

This All Star Charts +Plus Monthly Playbook breaks down the investment universe into a series of largely binary decisions and tactical calls. Paired with our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard, this piece is designed to help active asset allocators follow trends, pursue opportunities, and manage risk.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

We keep saying it: There are just so many good setups out there.

You've noticed?

This is the first time in months that there's generally a good shape to the price action in these beaten-up altcoins.

We had a feeling this one would be fun to watch unfold...

After just 24 hours of speculation and buzz about Elon Musk becoming the largest shareholder of Twitter, we already have some important follow-up news.

In an 8-K filed around 8:30 a.m. ET today, Twitter reported that Musk has been appointed to a board seat.

The only significant information in the filing is that Musk is restricted from becoming a beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of outstanding shares during the time he serves as a director (and 90 days thereafter).

Whether he already owns the 14.9% now or not is unknown. We should find out soon in a 13D and/or a Form 4 filing in the coming days.

Stay tuned. There’s going to be more to come on this one.

Media has been in the media for a while. (Just had to do that.) The sector has performed well and one of the constituents looks prime for a good move.

Today we are looking at a long set up in the Media sector and we're here to discuss just that.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but NOT both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

They’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended April 1, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

• Our macro universe was mixed this week as 53% of our list closed higher with a median return of just 0.05%.
• The Dow Jones Utilities Average $DJU was the winner on the week, closing with a 4% gain.
• The biggest loser was Crude Oil $CL, with a weekly loss of -12.84%.
• There was an 11% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 23%.
• 36% of our macro list made fresh 4-...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

 A Warning From Banks

With risk-seeking behavior increasing, Financials and banks are lagging behind and not participating to the upside in a way we’d expect. The chart below is an equal-weight representation of the six largest banks in the US. This index can act as a leading indicator for financials more broadly. The fact that the index has not been able to hold the 2007 highs in an environment where rates are rising globally is a concern. Throughout history, you don’t tend to see bull markets without financials. These are the largest and most important financial institutions in the world. Bulls want to see them carve out a bottom here and catch higher along with other cyclical stocks. It should happen soon if it’s going to.