From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The new year can bring the hope of a better market environment. While it can be tempting to draw conclusions about all of 2023 from how December closed and January has begun, we would counsel patience. One lesson from 2022 is that normally reliable indicators of strength can be distorted in elevated volatility environments. The evidence has not improved and caution remains warranted. The liquidity environment remains poor, last year’s pattern of lower lows and lower highs is intact and the trend in the net new high data has not improved. Across asset classes, and both in the US and around the world, uptrends are hard to find. Gold, though, is starting to shine.

Our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard fills in the details and includes a few charts that have our attention heading into 2023.

Have you ever resisted something?

Ok, that question answers itself. Of course you have. We all have.

For our purposes today, I’m more specifically focused on the periods when we resist something that deep down we know would be good for us. Or the right thing to do. Or the intelligent thing to do. Or the helpful thing to do.

When nothing but goodness can result from taking a specific action, why do we resist it? Why do we willingly sabotage ourselves like that?

Author Steven Pressfield in his bestselling book...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This market can't seem to get out of its own way.

Just when you think it can head uphill, we have a rug-pull.

Today it was data out in the morning that pushed the indices lower.

Another Santa Claus Rally is officially in the books.

This year the S&P500 rallied 0.80% during the period, which is more than 3 times the historical returns for all the other 7 day periods throughout the year.

You can learn more about the SCR in this note from last month.

OK so great, Santa showed up. So what?

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

We've said it time and time again.

It's all about the US dollar!

When did the NYSE new highs list peak? When the dollar bottomed...

When did equities bottom? When the dollar rolled over...

It's not rocket science.

I don't care why it's the case because the correlations are so evident. It's a fundamental reality in this tape: A weak dollar is positive for stocks and crypto, while a strong dollar pressures those assets.

Now, consider: What have been the defensive assets in this market?

The Japanese yen? Nope.

Gold? Not until recently.

Bonds? Hell no.

Whenever shit's hit the fan, that money has flowed into the US dollar.

It ain't rocket science, folks.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Futures are up a tad this morning.

What I'm looking for is $SPY to push past 386 and head to 387.80.

Support is at 382.70.

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

The only 13D on our list was filed by Impactive Capital LP, which revealed an increase in ownership from 7.20% to 7.50% in Envestnet $ENV.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Overall it was a decent day for the indices, considering we had data out at 10 a.m. ET and then FOMC minutes at 2 p.m.

I'd still like to see the indices trend higher. Specifically, I'd like to see $SPY 387.80.

This is the video recording of our January 4, 2023, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

Happy New Year everyone. How are you playing it?

This morning, our analyst team was bouncing ideas around when I posed the group this question:

"It's the beginning of a new year. Do we want to continue buying strength (as we have been)? Or do we want to buy some well-selected dips on stocks in sectors we like?"

In other words, what's our appetite?

The prevailing sentiment that won out was that we have been buying strength -- and that has worked well in some areas, particularly homebuilders, Chinese stocks, and metals stocks. But the reward-to-risk opportunities right now may be more favorable in the "buy-the-dip" camp.

So with this in mind, let's take a look at a stock in the semiconductors sector that has our attention.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Doing some basic math, the odds continue to favor a strong year for stocks in 2023.

There are some people out there who think the Nasdaq is the stock market. There are others who "only buy growth stocks".

I don't know what kind of masochist you need to be to think that way, but both of those are very foolish approaches to life.

The Nasdaq is full of growth stocks. And growth stocks historically underperform and make little progress when interest rates are rising. I'm not sure if you heard, but interest rates have been rising!

Since the Stock Market bottomed in June, the majority of stocks and sectors are up and to the right. It's only the biggest losers that are down, and there aren't that many of them. It's really just those nasdaq / growthy stocks that the masochists are focused on.

Make no mistake: Volatility is around the corner.

While price action is trending in nature, volatility mean-reverts. Periods of low volatility precede volatility expansions and vice versa.

So, where do we find ourselves today?

Bitcoin's price stability is at its third-highest level in the last five years.

Have you noticed?

Crypto volatility has completely died off. You'd probably get more juice trading the equity indices than shitcoins these days.

These extremes in volatility -- or lack thereof -- don't last long.

So, we're placing a high likelihood that Bitcoin will make a decisive move in the coming weeks.

And how are we looking to profit from this upcoming move?

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by the president and CEO of CarMax, Inc $KMX, William D. Nash.

Nash disclosed a $501,255 purchase of KMX shares.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

S&P futures are indicating at the 3,850 mark.

We need to maintain that level in order for this index to head higher.

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.

This week we're looking into Automobile Sector.

This is the video recording of our January 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session