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

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We’ve had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn’t have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to...

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

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.

Real Yields Roll in Favor of Gold

There has been plenty of evidence suggesting a significant breakdown in one of the world’s most critical inflationary assets, Gold. Miners look terrible, Silver and Platinum are weak, and the Silver/Gold ratio recently hit multi-year lows. These aren’t the type of data points that support higher gold prices. Real yields are another piece of evidence we can add to that list. The chart below shows the US 10-year real rate inverted and a chart of Gold. They look almost identical. Gold futures tend to trend lower when real rates rise (moving lower on the chart). Despite every reason to break down, Gold has remained resilient. And now, as many of the negative data points mentioned above begin to reverse, including real yields, a rally in gold could ensue. 

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 positive as 87% of our list closed higher with a median return of 3.06%.
• Silver $SI was this week's winner, closing with an 8.49% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a loss of -9.94 %.
• There was a 2% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 74% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs.
• Meanwhile, only 9% of...

Did you see what just happened last month?

Financials went back and kissed the same prices they hit at their peak just before the Great Financial Crisis.

This is easily one of the most important price levels in stock market history. And I heard no one talking about it.

Meanwhile, the Home Construction Index did the exact same thing. In this case, even more special. The peak in Home Construction was when the fund launched, which is both classic and hilarious.

Here's what these retests look like:

While I prefer to let stocks prove themselves to me before taking a position, sometimes a situation sets up where the stars are aligning for a low risk bet that makes it worth the effort to get ahead of the crowd.

One such situation has developed in a name discussed recently in our Hall of Famers report.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Bitcoin price action has been a slow grind higher over the last month, while Ethereum and other altcoins have posted notable gains.

This very much remains an environment where crypto capital markets are moving in lockstep with legacy markets.

The relationship between long-duration assets (growth stocks) and the US dollar remains integral to our macro crypto thesis.

We continue to maintain the view that the US dollar is the single biggest driver of risk assets and, by extension, cryptocurrencies.

Further USD weakness would be a tailwind, while a stronger dollar would place pressure on crypto.

CD&R Investment Associates disclosed the purchase of approximately $6 million worth of Beacon Roofing Supply $BECN in a Form 4 on Friday.

The firm now owns 24,348,048 shares, which represents a roughly 35% ownership stake in the mid-cap building products company.

Last week I jumped on to Fox Business to talk markets with Charles.

He asked me about S&Ps, Russell2000 Small-caps, US 10yr Yield and Bitcoin.

It's funny, I don't think I've ever agreed this much with a TV anchor in my life.

His Technical Analysis was spot on.

So the setups are certainly there. But I think the catalysts are where we focus. And I believe that continues to be the Dollar and Rates.

Here's the full clip:

Are you watching?

Look what stocks and Crypto do with just a little tiny bit of Dollar weakness.

In fact, US Dollar Index Futures are only down 3.0% off the highs.

And look how stocks have done since the Dollar stopped going up a couple of weeks ago:

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.

One of the processes we absolutely love to follow is the Top/Down Analysis approach. In this process, we identify the larger trend, zoom in, and analyze the characteristics that stand out. We look at the asset classes, identify the strongest one, and then deep dive. Next, we look at sectors and identify the pockets of outperformance. Finally, we look at an actionable trade that suits our risk and reward parameters.

So let's see what we have this time around!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down 5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. 

Then, we sort the remaining names by...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The past two years of sideways chop on the gold chart has been a game of perseverance and pain. 

Gold is a honey badger, attacking a beehive face-first, digging for larvae, and somehow persevering through a thousand bee stings.

That can’t be fun, especially as other areas of the market have experienced explosive trends. But it works for the honey badger.

And it's worked for gold.

Now that commodities and stocks have come under increased selling pressure, the data continues to mount in favor of declining gold prices. 

Precious metals are looking weak. Gold stocks are breaking down on absolute and relative bases. And signs of risk appetite are nowhere to be seen.

But gold doesn’t care.

Before we get into the absolute weakness in gold and other precious metals, let’s review the relative weakness in the mining space.

Here’s a dual-pane chart of the Gold Miners ETF $GDX versus the Gold ETF $GLD and...

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Monday August 1st @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Monday evening:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As this summer’s relief rally gains momentum, the new highs list is gaining and growing along with it.

For long-only universes like The Hot List, this is great news.

Why?

Because we finally have a good amount of bullish chart setups to choose from again. For a few months there, we were struggling to find solid opportunities for putting on long exposure.

We’ve been patiently waiting for evidence that the market is turning. And while we’re not out of the woods yet, conditions have improved significantly since June.

Let’s dive in and talk about some health care stocks that have our attention right now. 

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

We got a breadth thrust this week as the percentage of S&P 500 stocks making new 20-day highs edged above 55% on Thursday. This might not be the most well-known of the various breadth thrusts, but it’s the one I lean on most heavily. It’s part of our bull market re-birth checklist and watched by market pros. It’s not an all clear signal or a guarantee that the market will not go down. The market stumbled after the July 2011 signal and the performance in the wake of the March 2002 signal was ugly. But overall, this tended to point to improving conditions and indicate that the market may more easily move up and to the right. I have reservations right now (we continue to see more new lows than new highs) and I believe much of the rally off the June lows has been built on a premise that will prove false. But the data are what they are. To quote Walter Deemer, “Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to sell and buy.” Breadth thrusts signal...