From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key takeaway: Investor optimism has been unwinding even as indexes have moved into record territory and breadth remains strong (NYSE new high list at its highest level since 2004). This week’s featured chart shows the spread between institutional and individual sentiment collapsing. This has tended to occur ahead of market strength, not weakness. While the risks from a strategic positioning perspective are undiminished (especially in the context of valuations and household equity exposure), the short-term and intermediate-term sentiment picture has improved in recent weeks as optimism has come off the boil. It looks to me like investor sentiment has moved off of the risk side of the scale and the weight of the evidence is turning more constructive not more cautious.

Sentiment Chart of the Week: Sentiment Spread, II less AAII

The current intensity of the advisory services move toward a cautious stance matched with a rise...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

The market continues to fire on all cylinders right now. Last week's gains were nothing but a continuation of the same resiliency and momentum we've come to expect from risk assets over the last year.

As for what's providing buying opportunities over the next few months and quarters, it is still strongly centered around cyclical areas pertaining to Energy, Financials, International Markets such as Canada...

This is the video recording of the March 2021 Conference Call.

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

One lesson you learn pretty quickly as a market analyst is that not all assets are created equal.

Each and every financial instrument carries its own unique bundle of nuances... from a stocks' beta or systematic volatility as well as its residual risk, to the fee structure and rebalancing methodology of an exchange-traded fund or note, to the settlement and delivery procedures governing futures contracts.

All of these things impact the behavior and performance of these various markets.

Today, we're going to focus specifically on the inner workings of International Country ETFs and the way they are impacted by the currency component inherent in these vehicles.

Let's dive right into it, starting with last week's Mystery Chart reveal.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: New high lists are expanding, yet investors are turning more cautious. Weight of the evidence favors focusing on opportunity over risk. Commodity market strength encouraging development for economy and investors. Rotation to cyclical leadership has just begun.

Energy has climbed to the top of our sector-level relative strength rankings, occupying the number one spot across all three capitalization levels. Energy hasn’t been at the top of the rankings since mid-2018. We are also seeing sector-level leadership (again across all capitalization levels) in Financials, Materials and Industrials. Previous leaders continue to drop in the rankings as “quality growth” has fallen out of favor. Stubborn investors are sitting on their hands, adaptive investors are listening to the market and following these new leadership trends. Industry group rankings show small-cap groups dominating the top of the rankings, and large cap groups dominating the...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y-axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.

This chart can be of any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes it’s an absolute price chart, other times it’s on a relative basis.

It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!

The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize it objectively.

While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…

So let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

Strazza put out a post this weekend about scanning for strength in selloffs. Give it a read. Here's the Cliff's Notes: the recent selloff in tech has been an excellent opportunity for new leadership to reveal itself.

One of the names we like makes computer hardware and we're getting a nice little pullback today to lean in to a trade here.

Value stocks, Financials, Energy, Industrials and Materials.

If that doesn't scream Canada, then I don't know what does!

Here's what the breakdown looks like:

With Canada's biggest sector breaking out, how can we not be all over this?

Notice the new highs accompanied by positive momentum readings:

We had to put together a short video breaking down the major Canadian Indexes and Sectors. You'll also find some interesting trades in here.

There's a lot going on so let's dive right in.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

As most of you know, we're big on our scans here at All Star Charts. And believe it or not, selloffs are actually some of the best times to scan for strength.

While our parameters will vary based on the market backdrop, there are two main things we almost always focus on when scanning for strong stocks in any environment.

First and foremost, we're always looking for leadership. As many of you know, I'm a big advocate of fishing in the right places. Whether it's secret spots on the gulf stream or areas of markets showing strength, it's the same strategy... We want to position ourselves for the best catch.

We also want to limit our risk in case we're wrong. For us, this is as simple as betting only on those setups with clearly defined risk/rewards that are skewed heavily in our favor.

In other words, if we're right, we book hefty profits. On the other hand, if we're wrong, we'll know quickly and be out with minimal damage, and onto the next opportunity.

In...

From the desk of Steve Strazza 

Don't miss this weeks Momentum Report; our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector and Industry Group level. As a reminder, we analyze this shorter-term data within the context of the structural trends at play.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In our continued effort to identify individual equities that fit within our larger Macro thesis, we recently rolled out our latest bottoms-up scan: "The Minor Leaguers."

We write a post every other week where we outline some of our favorite setups from this universe of stocks.

We've already had some great trades come out of this column and couldn't be happier about the early feedback.

Moving forward, we'll be rotating this column with "Under The Hood" each week.

In order to make it onto our Minor League list, you must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters.

Then, we simply sort the stocks by their percentage from new highs. Easy done.

The idea is to catch the strongest names while they're still small and have serious upside potential. If any of these stocks ever climb up the ranks...

This week we're looking at a long setup in the IT sector. Yes, this sector might just be back into rotation! We're also taking a look at an updated target in the Industrial Manufacturing sector.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in mid-July 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

Small-Caps have been outperforming the large-cap indexes by a mile so far this year.

Since January 1st, the S&P Small-Cap 600 is up roughly 25%, compared with just a 5% gain for the S&P 500, and 0% for the Nasdaq 100.

This leadership is showing no signs of slowing, as they once again led the market back to fresh all-time highs this week after a brief and shallow reset.

Not only has the momentum behind this move been astounding, but the S&P Small-Cap 600 just experienced another significant breadth thrust, this time in its percentage of new 52-week highs.

Let's take a quick look at these developments and what they mean for the group going forward.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Markets never operate in a static manner. Instead, markets are dynamic and remain in a natural and constant state of flux.

In knowing this, we must always remain flexible and aware of the changing conditions and developments taking place around us. We pride ourselves on our ability to evolve and adapt to these changes in market structure and are never dogmatic in our approach.

For the last decade, US large-cap growth has been where the alpha is, and derivatives of this theme like large over small, stocks over commodities, and US over international have been very powerful relative trends. We know this well because we've been leaning on them for a long time...

But that's all changed recently, as we've been vocal about the importance of repositioning and decreasing exposure to growth in favor of more cyclical, value-oriented stocks.

If history is any guide, Emerging Markets should be a major beneficiary...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Treasury yields have resumed their upward ascent and the 10-year T-Note yield appears poised to move toward 2.0%. I saw a study this week from Joe Kalish of NDR that suggested such a move would put further downward pressure on the NASDAQ 100 (to the tune of a 20% peak-to-trough decline). Joe’s analysis tends to be pretty astute, so it’s something to think about even if you don’t come to the same conclusion. Another thing to keep an eye on: if these new highs in Treasury yields are going to be sustained, the yields around the world are likely going to echo the move in the US. Right now, yields in both Germany and Japan are shy of their late-February peaks (0.17% for the JGB and -0.26% for the Bund).

In the latest RPP Report put out by All Star Charts, the team remains bullish on the continued sector rotation into energy and oil sector names.

While some of these moves are somewhat extended, there is still a lot of ground to reclaim to get back to former highs. Our bet is the big move is still coming...

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

In this week’s Commodity Report, we saw a continuance of many of the same themes that we've been pounding the table on for months now.

Mainly, strength in the procyclical areas of the market like Energy and Base Metals. This fits with what we’re seeing in Equity Markets as the rotation out of Mega-cap growth and into more cyclical sectors takes hold.

However, Crude Oil and Copper aren’t the only Commodities catching a bid right now. We’re also seeing strength in the grain markets. 

One of the charts that caught our attention this week was Palm Oil Futures.

Palm Oil is one of the most important Commodities in Asia and combined with Soybean Oil it accounts for roughly 63% of the global production of vegetable oils. Its uses vary from cooking and producing processed foods to personal care products like soaps and fragrances. It also plays a key role as feedstock for biofuel production.

While it's important to understand what we're...

The universe comprises several solar systems- big and small. Similarly, the market comprises several conglomerates- big and small. We're back with another such conglomerate that we'd like to look at today- Bajaj Group.

One of the oldest and most reputable conglomerates of India, the Bajaj Group has been instrumental in generating great returns for investors across the board over the years.

Let's take a look at what the charts have to say.

We created an equally weighted custom index of the Bajaj Group constituents. A big base breakout can be seen here as is the case with several charts in the market. The Bajaj Group seems to have moved out of a four-year base and looks good for another leg of the rally.

Click on chart to enlarge view.

Now let’s take a look at individual stocks and where they stand at present.