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.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to move in...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under The Hood columne, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 16, 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 large institutional...

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.

New Lows for Big Tech

When it comes to the most important stocks, it’s all about tech. Mega cap technology companies dominate the US indexes and are in just about everyone's portfolio. The chart below illustrates just how paramount their performance is for the broader market. We have overlaid the relative trend between technology stocks and the S&P 500 with the Nasdaq 100 on absolute terms.

While the chart shows less than a year of data, the correlation between the two is consistently strong throughout all of history. This makes perfect sense as technology stocks represent roughly half of the weighting in the Nasdaq. Not only did we see new lows in a growing number of large cap tech stocks last week, but the group also made new 52-week relative lows at the index level. This kind of relative weakness tells us we should expect further downside for the market’s largest stocks. If that’s the case, the major...

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:

• This week, our macro universe was negative, as 89% of our list closed lower with a median return of -2.90%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the winner, closing with a 15.40% gain.
• The biggest loser was Dow Jones Transports $DJT, with a weekly loss of -8.79%.
• There was a 3% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 11% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs....

Key Takeaway:

• Thrust but verify.
• Fed up with higher rates.
• Worst six month stretch ever has investors in an exceedingly bad mood.

The June index-level lows are holding for now, but the response to the breadth and momentum thrusts that accompanied the summer rally has been somewhere between uninspiring and historically bad. On the one hand, the S&P 500 was essentially flat in the month following July 28 breadth thrust signal based on a surge in the percentage of stocks making new 20-day highs and even now is not outside the range of what has been seen in the past. The mid-August signal based on surging 40-day momentum, however, has been followed by unprecedented weakness.

These thrusts typically are evidence that conditions are improving and a sustainable rally is at hand. But that is usually verified by longer-term trends turning higher and consistently seeing more stocks make new highs than new lows...

Great weekend of Charts and Football for me!

How about you?

More Charts than Football? Or the other way around?

I definitely got a healthy dose of both.

And this one for me definitely stands out.

The way I learned it from Ralph Acampora many years ago was, "DON'T FIGHT PAPA DOW"

So here's the Papa Dow he was referring to. I included the key levels we've been focused on since the 2018 correction. They've really helped and I think they continue to.

But for today, let's focus on the fact that prices are both below overhead supply and above support from the summer lows.

From any sort of intermediate-term...

I know this might be breaking news to some of you, but there are often great opportunities to be had in international stocks. And the All Star Charts International Hall of Famers report regularly serves up the best setups out there.

Today's trade comes directly from the most recent report, so let's board the airplane and head abroad!

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

Here's something you don't see every day.

Silver showing a bullish divergence?

How could this not be the chart of the day?

Gold is making new multi-year lows this week, but Silver is pushing higher.

In fact, despite the recent pressure in Gold prices, Silver is going out at the highest weekly close since early August:

If there's one group that continues to stand out it's the Healthcare Providers.

We've been pounding the table again and again for one simple reason. The charts of the healthcare providers don't look like most of the other stocks.

These names are going from the lower left to the upper right. They're consolidating sideways, instead of lower.

This is what we call, "Relative Strength":

You know how I know we've been in a bear market?

Because investors got hammered. And not just in 2022, but over the past year and half.

But specifically, look at the average household over the past 2 quarters. They're seeing record losses:

Over the weekend, we've seen risk-off action persist following hotter-than-expected inflation data.

Following the Ethereum merge, most coins have sold off rather aggressively. Bitcoin now lies on a key level of support at its year-to-date lows, while a large number of altcoins have already made new lows.

For us to flip to a more bearish approach, we'd need to see Bitcoin confirm this internal weakness, which would manifest through a downward break of the 18,000 support band.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by two members of the Starbucks $SBUX board of directors, chair Mellody Hobson and member Richard Allison.

They reported purchases of SBUX worth a combined $5.9 million.

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 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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

The big news in commodities this week is gold breaking down to its lowest level since early 2020.

I recently outlined what a downside resolution for the shiny yellow rock could mean for inflation and the entire commodity space.

Spoiler alert: a fresh leg lower from gold doesn’t bode well for raw materials or the prospects of sustained inflation.

Nevertheless, inflation hasn’t gone anywhere, at least not yet. 

As long as that’s the case, we expect commodities to see further upside, albeit not in unison. The broad rally witnessed at the end of 2020 into 2021 is unlikely to be repeated in the near future.

Regardless, stellar buying opportunities will present themselves.

We aren't going to let the bifurcated nature of commodity markets stop us from catching the next explosive rally.

In other words, the supply and demand dynamics for copper don't affect our decision to trade soybeans or wheat.

Instead, let's trade what is in front of us – even as...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Willie Delwiche.

This week’s upside surprise in inflation is raising the stakes for next week’s FOMC meeting. While the 10-year T-Note yield is still just below its June peak, yields at the shorter-end of the curve are breaking out to the upside. Leading the way is the 1-year Treasury yield, which crossed above 4.0% this week for the first time in 15 years. Even more pronounced is the pace of its ascent. One year ago, the yield on 1-year Treasuries was just 7 basis points (0.07%). That makes for the largest year-over-year change in yields since the early 1980’s. Investors are unaccustomed to yields moving this high and this fast and that is disrupting both financial markets and the economy. Continued upward momentum in yields could leave the macro situation vulnerable to further deterioration and increase downside risks to equities. Stocks do the best in periods of sustained strength and low volatility, neither of which is present at the moment. 

Every week, the team publishes the Follow The Flow report which surfaces unusual options activity. This is a report I reference often, not because I want to do the same trades that surface in the scan, but when I can find a technical setup that I like that is supported by the options flow, this can often lead to a bit of alpha with my own options strategy.

However, in today's case, I think I may jump aboard with the unusual options buyers and play along with them in a small-cap oil tanker.