From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What a year for currency markets!

The USD/JPY tested its 1998 highs marked by the Asian Financial Crisis. The British pound revisited its all-time lows. And the euro fell below parity versus the US dollar for the first time in twenty years.

But where does that leave the King Dollar heading into Q1 2023 now that it has fallen almost 10% off its September peak and many global currencies have reclaimed key levels?

Let’s turn to the charts for some answers…

First, take a look at the US dollar index $DXY:

The dollar index is reaching a crucial level marked by the 2016 and 2020 highs – a logical spot for it to bounce. Honestly, I’d be surprised if it doesn’t! 

Yet, the DXY seems stuck in the mud. That’s information.

Here’s a look at the daily chart:

...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices dropped all morning long.

Santa has not come to town just yet.

This is the video recording of our December 28, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

This market's been so easy, right?

You literally had to do nothing, and you've outperformed some of the most sophisticated crypto trading firms on the planet.

By loss realization and institutional contagion, this is the single worst crypto bear market in history.

So, if you're still here with a few dollars to your name, take solace in the fact that you've done a better job at risk management than some of the most intelligent players in the space.

For us, our process has been incredibly simple.

The trend has been down, and we haven't wanted to buy rallies until some long-term bullish shape has been put in.

In recent months, we've been incredibly persistent with our cautious approach while most coins are below their June lows.

Take our equally weighted altcoin index. There's nothing to be done here:

You can pretend it's not that way. You can mold outdated strategies that worked in bullish environments to this current market.

Go ahead, try. Swing at every random breakout or anomalous rally in a bear...

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:

One thing I know about this time of the year is that whipsaws thrive.

We call it Whipsaw Hunting Season.

The lack of liquidity, and lack of interest due to other life priorities, creates over-extended and exaggerated moves that otherwise would not be allowed to occur under normal supply and demand conditions.

But since the b-squads are on the desks, you regularly get failed moves this time of the year that result in very fast moves in the opposite direction.

For some great examples see $GDX in December 2016 and check out $TLT in December 2013, among many others.

These were nasty failed moves that ripped the short sellers' faces off into the new year.

We see these sorts of moves born around this time every single season. It's perfectly...

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Hill Path Capital Partners LP.

The hedge fund bought $14 million in Dave & Buster's Entertainment $PLAY.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices kind of went nowhere yesterday.

$SPY would need to recapture 385 in order for the market to trend higher.

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.

This week we're looking into the Capital Goods sector.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended December 23, 2022. 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...

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, with 55% of our list closing lower with a median return of -0.11%.
• The 30-Year Yield $TYX was the winner, closing with an 8.32% gain.
• The biggest loser was the Volatility Index $VIX, with a weekly loss of -7.74%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 2%.
• 15% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs,...

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.

Discretionary Takes a Dive

The Large Cap Consumer Discretionary SPDR (XLY) broke below its pre-Covid highs of around $132 last week. The recent price action in XLY is an excellent illustration of how the weakest stocks are performing. We're witnessing a growing list of bearish continuation patterns resolve lower in growth indices as renewed selling pressure grips the market.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a very slow day.

Fortunately, we did have some decent winners inside the live trading room.

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...

You go on the twitter and all you see are people complaining about what a bad year this is for stocks, how bad the stock market is, recessions, bear markets, the Fed, blah blah blah.

I don't understand. What's everyone so angry about?

Stocks continue to do well. In fact, the back half of this year has been one of the better ones that we've ever seen.

Look how well most sectors have done since the market bottomed in June:

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

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Merry Christmas!

I hope you enjoyed these last few days shutting off, spending time with your family, and eating good food.

Unlike most of the world, it's summer in New Zealand. Over here, we spend our Christmases in the hot sun, swimming, and enjoying the outdoors.

It's a great vibe.

But let's get a little crypto out of the way before our New Year's celebrations.

We'll keep this short, as there's simply nothing to update.

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list comes in a 13D from Deerfield Asset Management’s James Flynn.

Flynn increased his ownership stake in Terns Pharmaceuticals $TERN by 1%.