From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I’m avoiding the US dollar and interest rate chopfest.

That includes interest rate-sensitive commodities like crude, copper, and gold.

So, let’s check in with a commodity group that walks to the beat of its own drum…

The New York City Softs: Cocoa, Coffee, Cotton, and Sugar.

First up, Cocoa. 

I’m sure you’ve seen Cocoa’s 45-year base breakout to new all-time highs:

Cocoa futures have been the main attraction, showcasing a face-ripping rally reminiscent of the 1970s.

In the 70s, Cocoa experienced two 400-plus rallies, each spanning approximately two years trough-to-peak (December ‘71 to April ‘74 and June ‘75 to August ‘77).

Cocoa might have another explosive rally in the tank!

For now, it’s bouncing between two critical extension levels:

Bulls are supporting higher prices at roughly 7,200, while bears are capping the next rally at 10,...

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 Crowdstrike and Arista Networks.

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. Click here to check it out.

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...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to this one, it couldn't be any simpler!

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

The bottom line is it is a bull market. We want as many vehicles and options to express...

In 2019 Tesla was worth a tiny $30 Billion.

By 2021 Tesla was approaching a market cap of $1.3 Trillion.

The job of a CEO is to increase shareholder value.

Period.

No CEO in history made shareholders more money faster than Elon Musk.

It's just math.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The Nasdaq is ripping to new all-time highs. NVIDIA’s market cap is surpassing the three-trillion-dollar mark. And US T-bonds are registering another buy signal. 

But the market’s still a mess. 

Just look at yesterday’s intraday reversal—a bullish reaction to inflation data in the morning, followed by a bearish reaction to the FOMC meeting in the afternoon. Investors are still trying to make sense of the mid-week hoopla.

Friday’s close (the most important data point of the week) will reveal critical information regarding market conviction heading into the weekend.

Meanwhile, you can track high-yield bonds for risk-on confirmation.

Check out the HY Bond ETF $HYG overlaid with the high beta-versus-low volatility ratio (using the $SPHB and $SPLV ETFs):

These two charts are carbon copies over the trailing 52 weeks because HYG is a risk asset...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

It's not a bad thing for America, Americans or the American Stock Market that the largest companies in the country are going up in price.

The best players are scoring a lot of points.

That's perfectly normal.

In fact, if you go back and study every bull market over the past 100 years, you'll notice that Technology is a leader in almost every single one of them.

Tech stocks doing well, and outperforming other sectors, is just a classic characteristic of a bull market.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Check out these currency headlines:

The Buck Strikes Back… 

Investors Sideline a Defiant Dollar… 

Dollar Down? The 10-Year Says “Yes!”... 

The USD Rally Proves Sticky… 

Weighing a Potential Dollar Breakdown…

Well, which is it? Is the dollar going up… or down?

I have no idea. 

But given the market's current shape, your best forex bets are to short the euro and buy the yen…

If that sounds familiar, I shared a similar perspective during last month’s Fed Day.

A month and a half later, the euro is trading at...

The world's most important stock market index hasn't been able to make any progress at all since early February.

Look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average the past 4 months.

The returns are non-existent:

Last week, we held our June Monthly Strategy Session. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

During our monthly calls, we focus on long-term charts in an effort to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and examine the markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended June 7, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation 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...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Metals bulls are waking up following last week’s selling pressure.

Copper, silver, platinum: It didn’t matter. Base and precious metals took a hit.

It was ugly but not a complete disaster.

Call me a gold bug if you like (I won’t take offense), but don’t overlook the key takeaway from last week’s session: gold’s resilience.