From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The stock market’s reaction to this week’s sharp rise in bond yields has intensified talk of a durable shift in long-term equity leadership, within the US as well as on a global basis. That discussion leads to questions about the best way to visually represent such shifts and what relationships we want to keep our eyes on for evidence that such a shift is indeed taking place. In terms of shifting US leadership, you could do a lot worse than the ratio between the old AMEX Composite (technically now it is the NYSE Mkt Composite) and the S&P 500. The AMEX Composite has less of a mega-cap, tech-sector focus than does the SP& 500. S&P 500 leadership peaked in the late 1990’s and this was followed by a decade of relative strength out of the AMEX. The following decade was again dominated by the S&P 500, but over the past year, the AMEX has perked up and looks ready to wear the leadership mantle again. Getting above its June and November highs versus the S&P 500 would be strong evidence that it is ready for that role. Despite carnage elsewhere to begin 2022, the AMEX Composite closed at a new high as recently as...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The most speculative areas of the market peaked in Q1 of 2021 and have been under pressure ever since. It’s not just IPOs and SPACs. Areas like biotech, social media, and online retail have completely fallen out of favor too.

Many of the stocks that have been selling off were among the top performers off the COVID lows in 2020. Some of these former leaders are in 60% to 70% drawdowns today.

What a difference a year can make!

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to the first rate hike, the prevailing opinion seems to be that these stocks will remain under pressure. As things currently stand, there's not much on the charts to suggest they're ready to turn things around.

On the other hand, some of these industry groups are already more than 30% off of their highs -- and that’s at the index level. Eventually, further downside would be inconsistent with the idea that stocks are in a bull market.

For the health of the overall market, we want to see these stocks stop selling off so aggressively. Despite the volatility this week, there are some signs that this is happening.

Let...

Well well well, what do we have here?

The first two days of this week completed a nearly text book Santa Claus rally. Then on Wednesday, it appears the Fed may have stolen his Sleigh and now his reindeer have no idea which way to steer!

This indecision has played out in the options market by raising the risk premiums being asked across a wide sector of index ETFs.

At times like this, I like to go hunting for premium-selling opportunities. And I've got one teed up so lets get to it!

This is the video recording of our January 7, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

We trust the bond market around here.

I don't have a lot of faith in people, or media or economists. But bonds are something we certainly take seriously.

There's no bullshit with them.

The biggest players in the world have no choice but to be intimately involved in fixed income markets. So if you're curious which way the pendulum is swinging, you'll be able to see it in bonds.

Here's a quick look at US Interest Rates making new highs - from the 1yr to 10yr yields these are going towards the upper right:

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 the video recording of the January 6th Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche & JC Parets

01/06/22 2:00 PM ET

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

I recently watched The Matrix with my son. 

Not the fourth installment released late last year, but the original movie – the one that came out more than 20 years ago.

One important caveat: My son is only 13. The Matrix is an R-rated movie filled with violent action scenes. So I didn’t take the decision to let him watch the movie lightly.

Ultimately, I decided the movie raises some important ideas that I wanted to share with him. I'm not talking about ideas of simulated reality or various theatrical elements. For me, one of the key insights is that by tuning out the noise, we can improve our decision making. By focusing on what matters, we have more time to act. When wisdom combines with clarity of purpose, the seconds seem to tick by more slowly.

This doesn't just happen in the movies. Watch an experienced quarterback engineer a winning touchdown drive in the final two minutes of a football game and you will get a sense of what I mean. They seem to have more time to decide, act, and react than anyone else on the field. Maybe time is indeed passing more slowly for them.

What does...

Over the last week, we've been outlining how the market looks set to unwind out of this trading range.

High open interest combined with diminishing implied volatility, increased price stability, and thin futures volume all contribute to a scenario where the probabilities of a long/short squeeze are elevated.

We're still in elevated cash positions and, for the most part, still sitting on the sidelines.

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...

US Stock Market Indexes can be a funny thing. As investors we need to understand what's inside of them. Which stocks and sectors drive them higher or lower?

This seems like an afterthought in some circles, especially after the major large-cap indexes have put up nice returns the past 3 years. The S&P500, for example, was up 28%, 16% and 27% respectively in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

But at the individual stock level, it certainly didn't feel that way in many cases.

I have a good feeling 2022 will be the opposite. I think this year, the average and median stock has a higher likelihood to outperform the major indexes, for one simple reason.

No one owns a lot of these names.

We're buying an $MU June 100/125 Bull Call Spread for an approximately $6.50 debit. This means we’re long the 100 calls and short an equal amount of 125 calls

Check out our short video with the thought process behind these trades:

We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us towards the very best stocks in the market. This time around, we have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.

While we go through our lists of sectors and stocks on a weekly basis, we thought of launching a product that would highlight the strongest performers in our universe. These are the ones that are primed for an explosive move.

Just like The Outperformers scan, this is a list of stocks belonging to the sectors that display relative strength in the market at any given point in time. Since sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market, we will be ahead of the curve before the gears keep shifting.

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

Downside pressure on long-duration rates and a flattening yield curve was the story of the bond market for the latter part of 2021. 

But we started to see signs that downside risks were easing in the final weeks of December. The 10- and 30-year yields made a nice kick save after undercutting their summer lows, and high yield bonds $HYG began to outperform safer alternatives like the Treasury bond ETF $IEI.

It seemed like the bond market was heading in the right direction – except for Treasury spreads. The 2s/10s spread was the missing piece of the puzzle, continuing to push toward new 52-week lows… 

Until now!

Only a couple of trading sessions into the new year, the bond market is providing plenty of fireworks. Rates are jumping higher across the curve, and critical treasury spreads such as 2s/10s, are following higher: 

...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Year-end strength in stocks alleviated some of the concern that had crept into investors’ collective psyche. Short-term sentiment swings aside, investors remained positioned aggressively long stocks at a time when strategic risks remain high. December set a monthly record for equity ETF inflows and that price chasing pushed equity valuations to some of their highest levels on record. The optimism in positioning is not reflected in the sentiment surveys. But if the unwinding in the speculative bubble that peaked early last year gains steam, look for a lack of optimism to be replaced with outright pessimism, followed by a re-positioning of assets.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Commodities soar but struggle for attention

After a relative lull around mid-year, equity ETF inflows intensified as 2021 came to a close. A record $90 billion flowed into equity ETFs in December and pushed the total for the year above $650 billion.  Commodities continue to...

If this blog post was served up to you when you were searching for the latest scare porn on the omicron covid pandemic, I'm sorry to disappoint. But if you'd like to draw a correlation between the rising omicron cases and rising share prices of Micron technology stock --- you wouldn't be the first person to commit a #ChartCrime in service of a good story.

Micron Technology $MU is a stock that's been on my radar since the team published the Under the Hood report around Christmas highlighting the setup.

Here's what they had to say:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our January Monthly Strategy Session Monday night. Premium Members can access and re-watch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply 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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

The rally in the US Dollar Index $DXY is stalling out.

With each passing day, dollar internals are weakening, and the prospect of a bullish resolution from the current continuation pattern in DXY is diminishing. We expect these patterns to resolve quickly. And when they don’t, that’s information.

Some other things worth noting are that commercial hedgers hold a large short position in DXY futures and the near-term bearish trend for individual dollar crosses is expanding (up 20% from last week to a staggering 80%).

The bottom line is evidence continues to stack against the USD.

With that as our backdrop, let’s check in on a long USD trade that was triggered in November and outline how we want to navigate the coming days and weeks.

Toward the end of the year, we covered a couple of key levels that the dollar needed to clear to increase our conviction in its current...