From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

So far, the dollar-yen is playing its part with a little help from Tokyo.

Falling dollar, falling rates, falling dollar-yen…

That’s the mantra reverberating throughout the market. 

But will interest rates get on board?

Check out the US 10-year yield climbing within a four-month channel: 

The 10-year is reacting to the channel’s upper boundary after stalling 25 basis points short of its October 2023 peak. 

Those former highs and rising trading range mark a logical area to witness a near-term pullback.

Plus, interest rates are trending within a broader corrective wave, and momentum is posting a bearish divergence – two data points...

Last night was my favorite thing that we do around here.

We had our LIVE Monthly Charts Strategy Session for Premium Members of ASC.

This hour-long, 150-chart Monthly ritual allows us to take a step back, zoom out, and identify the most important primary trends across markets.

There is nothing we do here that adds as much value to my process than preparing for this call.

Premium Members can watch the replay here and download all the slides.

If you're not a Premium Member yet, you can ...

This is the video recording of our May 1st Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The Japanese government isn’t playing games.

Currency crisis or not, Tokyo is willing to defend the yen in the open market. It's proven this multiple times over the past three years, and today’s FOMC-related volatility will likely test its resolve. 

Considering previous yen-buying interventions, the dollar, interest rates, and the dollar-yen pair could be headed lower in the coming months.

Before we dive into the yen, here's a quick update on the action in the euro and pound.

The euro retested its breakdown level from earlier this month, forming a bear flag:

A close below 1.06 completes the flag pattern and sets a rough downside objective of 1.0450.

The British pound also pulled back this week:

Instead of simply...

I know I've already said it a lot over the past few months, but for those people in the back who may not be able to hear so well...

THIS YEAR IS NOT ANYTHING LIKE LAST YEAR.

The strategies that worked so well throughout 2023 are not the ones working this year.

Last year's leaders are some of the worst stocks in 2024.

The leaders in 2024, in many cases, were some of the worst sectors in 2023.

It's not bad or good. Better or worse. It's just different.

The better you get at adapting to the current environment, the fewer headaches you're going to have.

I'm 42 years old. I've been doing this for over 2 decades.

I have 3 kids.

Do you think I need more headaches at this point in my life? Or fewer?

And so that's why we've...

The month isn't over yet but I peaked.

How many assets can you think of that have been positive every single month this year?

Where do you find the most consistent leadership?

Is it in Technology?

No. Tech is down over 4.5% the past 2 months.

Is it Consumer Discretionary?

Nope. It's down 2 months in a row, falling almost 3%.

The answer is the US Dollar and Crude Oil Futures.

As we enter the final day of April, these 2 assets have been positive every month so far in 2024.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Random discovery, buying cheap, and riding the wave…

According to long-time gold mining investor Tommy Humphreys, these are three ways to score outsized returns in the junior mining space.

I’ll admit the first two strategies are foreign to me. But I can get behind riding a wave, especially when it jibes with a trend-following mentality.

Check out Tommy’s favorite gold mining stock, or "story," as he puts it…

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 April 26, 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...

In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza laid out the case of how both the Nasdaq 100 and Chinese tech stocks (particularly Chinese internet) might be signaling an important rise in speculative appetite which could fuel the next bull run.

Of the names Steve shared, the one that made the most sense to me was JD.com $JD. Check out this chart:

We're looking at the past year in $JD and it feels to us that if this motor gets running, we could target the low 40's with a good thrust which would be new 52-week highs.

Knowing that we might come into some overhead supply at those levels which could check the rise, and also knowing that upside call options are currently sporting some rich premiums, we're going to put both of these observations to our advantage by utilizing a bull call spread.

Here's the Play:

The Japanese Yen hit levels last night not seen in over 30 years.

There was historic volatility this morning and some key reversals that may or may not hold over the short-term.

But what you need to know is that the Yen is crashing. It's been losing value relative to "things".

These "things" include all kinds of assets including stocks, commodities and bitcoin, who have all been hitting new highs when priced in Japanese Yen.

Look at Bitcoin hitting new all-time highs in Yen terms:

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 Wednesday May 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 Wednesday evening: