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

Benchmark rates around the world have been rolling over as uncertainty sweeps across markets.

Despite the growing pessimism among investors, global yields are digging in at critical levels and bouncing higher in recent sessions. 

We discussed how international yields – particularly those in developed Europe – confirmed the new highs in US rates earlier in the year. 

Today, we’re going to check in on some of those same yields and see if this is still a piece of confirming evidence for rates here in the US.

With the US 10-year hovering around its breakout level at last year’s highs we’re looking for any clues we can get for whether or not these new highs are here to stay.

If the new highs in global yields are holding, that would go a long way in supporting the upside resolution in the US 10-Year.

On the other hand, if we start to see more and more yields around the world fail and roll over, the US will likely follow.

Let’s start with the US 10-year yield:

...

It's refreshing when we finally have a potential breakout to talk about when the market's been a total mess over the last few months.

The crypto "new highs" list has been so quiet and empty that you can almost literally hear the tumbleweeds dancing.

But here comes Terra $LUNA trying to bring back some life into that list. Gotta respect that.

So, is this the real deal?

Are we finally going to get that setup we've been waiting so long for?

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Put/call ratios are high, there are more bulls than bears on both the AAII and II surveys (a rarity over the past decade) and active investment managers have slashed equity exposure. If the conditions that have been in place since the Financial Crisis lows (which occurred this week in 2009) are still in place, it is hard to argue that sentiment is not a meaningful tailwind for equities and is fuel for a rally. Two cautions: Sentiment is a condition, but rarely a catalyst. This means price action needs to improve to bring bulls back on board. But more significantly, there is still evidence that the speculative unwind that began last year is still ongoing and strategic positioning indicators show little improvement that would indicate longer-term risks are subsiding. Those get exacerbated as the Fed starts to raise interest rates and withdraw liquidity.        

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Liquidity-Fueled Speculation Now Unwinding

Fed rate cuts in 2019 primed the...

I'm sounding like a broken record about elevated options premiums and my desire to be a net seller of options, and for good reason: $VIX continues to hang tight in the 30's. And when volatility is this high, it tends to favor the premium sellers. Not every time, but most of the time.

So during our morning Analyst meeting, me and the team were kicking ideas around for putting an options trade on today. And while there are some tempting candidates for putting delta-neutral credit spreads on -- we all coalesced around the idea of leveraging the high prices of put options here into a long position in Nucor Corp $NUE:

We’re probably not going to follow Nancy Pelosi into American Express $AXP or PayPal $PYPL.

And Warren Buffett’s recent purchase of a large stake in Occidental Petroleum $OXY doesn’t necessarily indicate an opportunity for us, either.

Moves by these big names are just good information.

Commodities have been at the center of our analysis for over a year now. There have been times when base metals have done well. And here have been times when agri commodities have done well. But every single time, precious metals stayed out of it.

Precious metals have been the worst place to be in over the past one and a half years. But it looks as though things are about to change.

Why?

Gold and Silver seem to be interested in jumping on the bullish bandwagon. Are they there yet? Let's take a look!

Precious metals have been the worst place to be in for the longest time. But with commodities across the globe taking off, precious metals finally got the memo. The cargo is on the move, folks!

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

US dollar strength is broadening as global currencies lose critical levels against it.

Last week, we outlined crucial support levels in the EUR/USD pair. Those levels have since given way, as sellers have taken control of this major forex cross.

Today, we’re going to highlight two other USD pairs that recently sliced through key levels, further paving a path of least resistance that favors the US dollar.

First up is the British pound, GBP/USD:

The pound has been carving out a distribution pattern for the past year.

Yesterday, it completed that pattern by violating a key level of former resistance turned support found at the 2021 lows around 1.32.

Momentum is also registering overbought conditions, confirming the recent breakdown.

As long as it’s below those former lows, we...

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 really hate to sound like a broken record, but we want to be downright obnoxious in hammering this down.

There's no edge in pushing longs right now, seriously.

You can try all you want. But all you're doing is asking to get whipsawed and chopped up.

Scroll down to download this week's chart deck.

It's a tale as old as time, traders pushing their opinions onto the market and not adapting their approach for different environments.

Trend-following strategies worked great in 2020 and after the summer bottom last year.

But now? Not so much.

Forget about headlines, opinions, or gossip. It's all noise.

Money is the only thing that moves markets. Follow money flow.

And what's the tape saying?

Downtrends and ranges everywhere. That's the tale for not just crypto, but macro too.

This is ugly isn't it?

Below all that support from last year near 350, and I can't see the argument for a long position:

This is a mess at best. A downtrend at worst.

We don’t typically track small transactions by members of Congress, those in the $1,000-to-$15,000 range.

But a recent move by Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a Republican from Georgia, is worth noting.

Nickel is making an explosive move as we speak and it is important to address it as soon as we can.

Commodities are picking up pace everywhere, across the globe and this move has been in the pipes for a while.

So what are the levels that we're tracking on this commodity? Check it out below.

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 March 4, 2022. This report is published biweekly 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...

Not many people know this, but I used to be a gold bug way back in the day.

Mid-2000s and into the financial crisis and beyond?

I was Mr. Gold Bug.

Any good technician was. That's how price told us to behave.

But then a funny thing happened. A combination of price and common sense proved that being a gold bug was no longer a good idea. That was about a decade ago.

And you know how humans are. Many of those angry little buggers stuck around and held other people's bags this entire time, while stocks and other risk assets have ripped making everyone rich, except for gold bugs.

It's funny how life works.

Because I think we might be back.

It's hard not to be in the Rocks > Stocks club these days.

Here's a good chart...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our March Monthly Strategy Session last Tuesday. Premium Members can click here to review the video recording and download the slide deck.

Non-members can see some highlights from the call by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaways:

• Market experiencing most persistent weakness since Financial Crisis.
• Path forward is about finding new opportunities rather than repairing past paradigms.
• Energy & Latin America benefitting from Commodity strength.

We are in the midst of the longest stretch of consecutive days of more new lows (NYSE+NASDAQ) than new highs since the financial crisis. While there have been more intense peak-to-trough drawdowns in the popular averages over the past decade and a half (late-2018 and early-2020 come to mind), it is the persistence of the weakness in the current experience that is noteworthy. Whether looked at from a market perspective or a macro perspective, the longer the disruption, the harder it is to just bounce back...

Metals have been gaining more strength with every passing day and have certainly been outperforming the market at present. We have a long setup from the Metals sector this time around as well.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!