From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a sleepy market, and then the indices started to trend back up.

$SPY needs to get above 415 to get a move on higher.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended April 14, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or...

My man Steve Strazza's reaction to this trade idea: "Yes! Bios have got some catch-up to play!"

I concur.

Though, I think we've got some overhead resistance that may slow the roll heading into summer. But that's ok -- we can use that to our advantage with a calendar spread.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Gold mining stocks are the play.

Why?

Because they’re working!

In a market overrun with whipsaws and failed moves, our gold mining trades are holding their breakouts and reaching our initial targets. Not many market areas can make that claim.

And when you consider they’re outperforming the S&P 500 and the physical metals, it’s hard not to like these names.

Especially as gold and silver run into logical levels of resistance…

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Gold mining stocks are the play.

Why?

Because they’re working!

In a market overrun with whipsaws and failed moves, our gold mining trades are holding their breakouts and reaching our initial targets. Not many market areas can make that claim.

And when you consider they’re outperforming the S&P 500 and the physical metals, it’s hard not to like these names.

Especially as gold and silver run into logical levels of resistance…

Gold is knocking on the door of all-time highs after gaining 13% over the trailing five weeks:

A pause at current levels makes sense – and is likely underway, as a bearish momentum divergence indicates waning strength.

That doesn’t change my bullish outlook for gold. Rather, my view simply turns neutral over the near term. 

It’s the same story for silver.

Gold’s crazy cousin is running into a logical level of overhead supply at approximately 26.

In 2020, we wanted to feed the ducks at 26, as it marked a key retracement level and a shelf of former lows. 

And here we are again, almost three...

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

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

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

The CEO, the CFO, the general counsel and the chief people officer of WD-40 Company $WDFC all filed Form 4s reporting purchases of their own stock for a combined amount of $267,366.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Last week was a battle.

It was a complete tug of war.

Welcome to The Buzz! 

Our mission at The Chart Report is to highlight ideas from the best traders and technicians on social media. 

Now, we’re taking this concept one step further and tapping into the madness of the crowd. 

That’s why we created The Buzz! 

Our mission at The Buzz is simple: to identify and profit from the most-talked-about stocks on the market today. 

But isn’t the crowd always wrong? 

The grandfather of contrarian investing, Humphrey B. Neil once said; 

“The public is often right during the trends, but wrong at both ends.” 

We agree with Humphrey, which is why we’ll be focusing on catching the meat of these trends, with both long and short ideas. 

The Buzz uses proprietary social media data from our partners at Likefolio. 

Every week, we compile a list of stocks that are experiencing the most momentum in terms of investor interest. Let’s take a look at which stocks are buzzing this week!

As it turns out, markets can remain solvent longer than you can remain irrational.

Stocks continue to catch a bid. This is despite any so-called "banking crisis" or even the "upcoming recession" that I've been hearing about for so long.

Markets remain solvent as the major US Large-cap Indexes keep pushing up against new highs.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

There’s no doubt about it: Fundamentals drive markets over longer time frames.

It’s a common misconception that technical analysts don’t believe in fundamental analysis. 

That’s not true.

Many of us simply chose to follow price for a multitude of reasons. Price always made sense to me, especially since it pays at the end of the day.

Whether you use fundamentals or technicals to inform your investment decisions comes down to philosophy. 

Remember, we’re all solving the same puzzle – just from different perspectives…

Check out the dual-pane chart below of the CRB Index and the overall CPI percentage change from a year earlier:

I was shocked at how closely these charts move in tandem. They look almost identical! It makes sense considering inflationary assets such as commodities rise along with inflation.

You can choose to focus on the CPI report or...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

$SPY hit the 415 mark and then pulled in.

And then this market limped into the close.

Tech was weak once again, and this might be a continuing theme. 

There are some big cap software stocks on the verge of resolving out of beautiful bases to the upside. Of course, we have to be on the ball to avoid earnings landmines as it's that time of the year.

That said, my favorite chart among these big caps that still has breathing room in it (about six weeks) before we have to deal with their next earnings report is Salesforce $CRM.

Check out this chart:

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

For many years, we had to hear those miserable gold bugs telling us how inflation was coming and Gold would be our savior.

Well, inflation came in harder than at any point in over 40 years and Gold prices fell.

So the same people who owned the only asset not making any money for an entire decade, got it wrong again.

I can't believe it.

So here we are, Gold prices are pressing up against all-time highs again, now that inflation expectations have been falling off a cliff.

The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes in a Form 4 filed by FedEx Corporation $FDX director Stephen E. Gorman.

Gorman reported a purchase of FDX stock worth $249,204.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Bank stocks are taking off this morning after some of their earnings releases, while tech stocks seem weak again.

It seems to be the theme of the week.