Do you remember 2017?

The memes going around those days were about how many days it had been since the S&P500 fell by over 1%.

Volatility was non-existent.

And this was hilarious to me, of course, living in California at the time and people freaking out about the Trump victory at the end of 2016.

With sentiment down in the dumps entering 2017, that sparked one of the greatest return / least volatile years on record.

In fact, 2017 had only 8 trading days on which the S&P500 was +/- 1%.

Every month so far this year has had at least that many:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during...

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

There's a lot of pain out there.

It's not just retail. Some of the most sophisticated crypto funds on the planet are blowing up. Lives are getting destroyed.

But here's a quick reminder: The best trades come when others are forced to exit and are at their lowest points.

Is it a nice way to make a living?

No. But you have to deal with it. Otherwise, you end up being on the wrong side.

The ETF providers in their infinite wisdom seem to be feeding on this sentiment, with the first short Bitcoin ETF being launched in the US this week. This feels awfully reminiscent of October, when the first Bitcoin futures ETF was launched.

Weeks after, the market put in its last top.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: More and more distribution patterns are resolving lower as bearish price action runs rampant across all major assets classes. Even the leadership groups such as commodities experience selling pressure as pessimism grows. Yet, while investors have expressed concern, they have not done much about it. Equity funds continue to attract inflows ($200+ billion YTD, according to DB) and households are hardly flush with liquidity. Perhaps it will take a second quarter in a row of being told not to look at their retirement account statements to prompt some investor action.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Copper Looks Tarnished 

Some call it Dr. Copper - the commodity with a PhD in economics. For me, it’s more like Mr. Copper, CMT - Emerging Market technical analyst. Either way, market participants express how they are feeling through the price of copper. Copper was an early leader off of the COVID lows but has moved sideways since early 2021. Now, our trend...

We had a resting GTC order filled to exit a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

This is the video recording of our June 22, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

There is probably a certain segment of the investing population that would look askance at me if I mentioned we're seeing "strength in China." They wouldn't believe that is possible. According to the news media they consume, China is "a mess." Perhaps that is true? But we only follow price here at our shop, and price is beginning to tell a different story.

Today's trade idea comes from TWO seemingly unlikely places: China and Internet! (what??????)

And when you see this chart of the Chinese Internet ETF $KWEB, you'll see why:

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

SkyKnight Capital Fund disclosed the purchase of approximately $1.6 million worth of shares in the home medical equipment company AdaptHealth Corp $AHCO, as it continues to build a position in the stock.

The fund now owns 8,906,070 shares, which represents a roughly 6.15% ownership stake in the medical devices company.

As technicians, we tell it as it is.

By focusing the vast majority of our research on price action, we're simply following money flow. We hate to sound like a broken clock, but if you're following something other than money flow, it's just noise.

Ignore it.

Money flow is by definition the only driver that impacts markets. That spans from price action, derivatives data, order flow, and, in the case of cryptocurrencies, on-chain.

Apart from that, all else is noise.

In this process, we typically have a rather binary view of markets.

"Above this level, we own it. Below there, we leave it alone."

We constantly say this for a reason.

We're not trying to be obnoxious in repeating itself. We are quite literally adjusting our thoughts based on money flow.

"Strong opinions, weakly held," as they say.

The market correction has extended over the past few weeks and the negative sentiment build-up is definitely not something that will fade away quickly. As more and more sectors move below their support zones, buy ideas are hard to come by. Today we're sharing a short idea from the financial services sector.

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

Whatever we’re looking for, the market has it.

If we’re searching for large topping patterns and strong downtrends, there’s plenty to go around, especially in the bond and stock markets right now.

Some people love taking the short side, feeding on the doom and gloom narratives accompanying the selling pressure.

But if that’s not your cup of tea, plenty of markets are trending higher. If you’re more interested in assets making new highs and like buying high and selling higher, look no further than the currency market.

When it comes to forex crosses these days, it’s simple.

All we have to do is put the US dollar in the numerator or place the Japanese yen in the denominator, and we get big bases that have either broken out or are on the verge of breaking out.

It’s that easy.

We’ve highlighted the yen in recent posts, so today we’ll switch gears and focus on a couple USD crosses from northern Europe.

Let’s dive in!

Here’s the US dollar/Swedish krona cross:...

Key Takeaway:

• Patient investors will let the bulls prove their case.
• Economic risks on the rise as data disappoints.
• Central bank action adding pressure to market and economy.

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...

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

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

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing from Allied Physicians of California.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $9.2 million in Apollo Medical Holdings $AMEH. It now owns about 11 million shares for a total ownership interest of 19%.