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.

Welcome to our weekly crypto open letter.

The last few weeks have seen a sizeable shift in our approach. Here's a summary of this period:

*Steve Strazza wants you all to know that HE came up with this title ;)

I have to be honest, its been hard looking for spots to put more bullish exposure on. Many stocks we like have already had significant bullish runs over the past three weeks. Buying some of these names here would feel like I'm asking to get smacked in the face by a long overdue pullback.

The commodity space is no exception. But we've found a name that looks like its just setting up for a fresh breakout so let's get right to it.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Q1 returns reflect a bifurcated market. Weekly data shows breadth struggling for traction. Inflation-fighting proposals are political palliatives, not economic solutions.

• There was a 50 percentage point  spread between the best performing sector (Energy) and the worst performing sector (Communication Services) in the quarter, the widest such gap in years.
• An even greater dispersion was seen between the best performing ACWI market in the quarter (Brazil) and the worst (Egypt).
• From an asset class perspective, commodities (+27%) posted their best gain in decades while bonds (-6%) experienced their worst loss in decades. The 60/40 (stock/bond) benchmark portfolio stumbled to one of its worst starts in the past quarter...

The big news of the day is centered around an SEC filing by the wealthiest man in the world.

This morning, Elon Musk disclosed a 9.2% ownership stake in Twitter $TWTR in a 13G filing. Musk has amassed roughly 73.5 million shares for a value of almost $3 billion.

According to the filing, Musk has been buying since the middle of March.

Where do you find your trading headspace?

How do you get to a place where you can immerse yourself in “the Zone” to think deeply about trades, strategies, strategizing, or new ways to approach risk management?

For me, far and away the best way to enter this zone is to go for a long walk – preferably in the mountains or in a forest. Just me, maybe my dog, and the sound of the wind whispering in the trees.

On Wednesday night, I returned from four days in the Redwoods National & State Parks of Northern California. Me and a friend hiked nearly 35 miles total.

I cannot begin to describe how amazingly beautiful this corner of the world is. It was my first time there. I took some pictures and videos, but it does not do it justice. You just cannot feel it the way you do when you’re standing amongst those towering Redwood trees and the deafening silence of the endless foggy forest washes over you.

Today we sit down and chat with Professional Trader Kimmy Sokoloff.

I'm lucky to have known Kimmy for well over a decade, and we hit it off from the start.

Kimmy went through the CMT program in the 90s. And funny enough, volunteered later on with the CMT Association to grade Level 3 exams, which are mostly essays. We joke that she most likely graded mine in 2007-2008.

While I like to look out weeks and months for my timeframes, Kimmy focuses specifically on the hours and days. A 2 week trade for her is "Long-term".

We're both trained in similar ways, as CMT Charter holders. But our experiences are different.

Kimmy spent most of her career in Institutional Sales and Trading. She spent decades on the phones all day with huge funds.

So when Kimmy has something to say, we want to listen. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

This is just too perfect.

Straight from the Monopoly Rule Book, written 90 years ago.

Who would have thought that our central bankers would be getting their inspiration from a board game?

And so what are the consequences of such shenanigans?

Well....