Did you see what the haters over at The Economist published last week?

Most of you have been around for a while so you already know.

But if you're new here to Allstarcharts, let's just say we do very well consistently taking the other side of this publication.

Few contrarian indicators are as reliable as The Economist:

It's the weekly commodity edition of What the FICC?

I want to share with you a trade idea I wouldn’t have considered a year ago...

Check it out!

Remember last year when everyone was bearish?

And I mean everyone!

It was funny, there I was telling people it was a new bull market, because we actually do the work around here, but investors weren't buying it.

In fact, we saw 44 consecutive weeks of more bears than bulls among individual investors. This was an even longer streak than we saw during the Financial crisis. Longer than COVID.

People were really angry.

You can see the AAII Bulls and Bears, along with their consecutive streaks plotted below:

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market was range-bound today. $SPY traded between 405 and 408.

We have CPI on Tuesday, so that will help the market pick a direction.

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Nearly three-quarters of the way through Q4 earnings season, two things stand out: stocks that have reported earnings misses have been less severely punished than in the past and an increasing number of companies are having their earnings estimates for the coming year revised higher. 

Why It Matters: This earnings season has hardly been spectacular and the percentage of companies beating estimates has been below average. Aggregate earnings numbers may (or may not) need to be revised lower as we move through 2023. But at this point, the worst case scenarios are not playing out and that has left plenty of folks offsides. Investors have moved to embrace the strength we have seen so far in 2023 and analysts are running higher numbers through their models. After seeing fewer and fewer upward revisions to earnings estimates in H2 2021 and H1 2022, the trend stabilized over the second half of last year and for now is ticking higher. The market doesn’t tend to get into too much trouble when analysts have...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I want to share with you a trade idea I wouldn’t have considered a year ago.

I balked at first. This trade’s simply not in my wheelhouse. But I’ve learned so much here at All Star Charts over the past three years.

And "to be open-minded" has been one of the most impactful lessons. 

Now, this setup has my full attention. Risk is well-defined, and the upside potential is heavily skewed in our favor.

I can see the spin on the pitch.

I’m talking about natural gas…

Before I lay out the levels, let’s step back and look at the big picture.

Natural gas stocks, represented by the Natural Gas ETF $FCG, haven't experienced the same extreme sell-off as natural gas futures $NGF:

In fact, they’re hanging tough much like other energy stocks. We’ve seen this before with crude oil and the Energy Sector ETF $XLE in recent quarters. 

So far, crude oil is carving out a base while XLE continues its...

This is the video recording of our February 10, 2023, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

Strazza and I did The Flow show earlier this week in which one trade that stood out and caught my interest was a juicy short squeeze candidate.

Checking back on it today, the stock still maintains a short position greater than 20%. That means more than one-fifth of all shares outstanding are held by people with a short position. And if this stock starts busting higher, the only way traders holding a short position can end the pain is to buy the stock.

This can potentially fuel a rapid rise in share prices (see: Gamestop $GME circa early 2020).

I'm certainly not calling for a repeat of past meme stocks short squeezes here, but in this case, we've got a stock that's chart is in the middle of completing a beautiful base and short holders are no doubt keeping their fingers near the trigger to exit this position quickly if we see some follow thru to the upside.

That creates opportunities for us.

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

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Bryant R. Riley, the chairman and CEO of B. Riley Financial $RILY.

Riley reported a purchase of $5.4 million worth of RILY stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I'll say this again, as I say it in the live trading room often: In a great bull market, you don't see this level of volatility.

This is not to say we can’t come out of this chop and slop. But, at the moment, we're still in the vortex.

It's the weekly bond edition of What the FICC?

I thought it was odd bonds didn't react to last week's rate hike. Regardless, the lack of volatility represents a positive development for risk assets, especially stocks.

Check it out!

I’ve been enjoying a (new to me) book recently. Today, I came across this passage that stopped me in my tracks:

Trading is a journey, not a destination. So you’re a trader. Now what? Trading is a constant process of intellectual and emotional growth, and people who trade for twenty years are still learning what to do and who to be when they finally hang it up.

From Street Freak, A Memoir of Money and Madness, by Jared Dillian.

It was almost like Jared was staring at me when he typed those words.

They hit home.

I’ve been in this game for over 20 years now. This coming summer will be the start of my 25th year!

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a wild day, once again.

I thought we were going to have movement higher if we were able to break above $SPY 414.5.

But it was a no-go. We headed back downhill.

From the Desk of Ian Culley 

Markets don’t always trend higher or lower. In fact, traders often deal with churn – which sometimes is nothing more than a range-bound mess.

"Sideways" is a trend that's all too easy to forget after last year’s historic volatility. Even bonds became risk assets in 2022!

I found it odd when bonds failed to react to last week’s rate hike along with other long-duration assets.

But the lack of bond market volatility might be exactly what risk assets, especially stocks, need right now.

Check out the chart of the US 10-year yield:

The US benchmark rate continues to hold above 3.40%. This has been our line in the sand for months, coinciding with the June pivot highs from last year.

The market has proven the significance of the level. More importantly, the near-term trend is turning sideways. Notice the 14-day average directional movement...

This is the video recording of the February 9th, 2023, Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche.

2/9/23 2:00 PM ET

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As our Premium Members already know, we have a laundry list of scans that we run internally on an almost daily basis.

Different market environments, naturally, are more conducive to certain scans and less so to others.

We think our Freshly Squeezed scan is perfect for the current market. In fact, we wrote our initial report in December just to be sure we wouldn’t miss the moves that have taken place in recent weeks. We’re confident there is more to come.

With so many individual issues in massive drawdowns as the broader market begins to turn a corner, we’re witnessing some serious short-covering rallies in some of the most beaten-down names.

In fact, it’s already starting to happen. Bed, Bath & Beyond $BBBY was up by almost 100% the other day. It’s very likely they’re going bankrupt. But that’s just the kind of market we’re in.

Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with the highest short positions. When a stock is heavily shorted, we know there are incremental buyers waiting in the...