I'll spare you the suspense -- we're getting long Marathon Petroleum $MPC here.

The title of today's post is not a trite pun. We are indeed positioning for a bullish move, but it may take a little bit to develop the way we want it to.

Thankfully, the beauty of options trading is that we can craft a strategy that takes advantage of a slow-developing play. So let's get right to it.

We've been talking about how the major strength in the current market has been coming through in IT. But what we also noticed is that while Nifty Pharma wasn't looking pretty on an absolute basis, the relative strength is pointing in a different direction.

Pharma has been gaining our attention for the past few weeks. This post will see if broad participation is back in Pharma or just a few value weightage stocks are gaining higher.

It's important to zoom out and really put what's going on into perspective.

You hear a lot about how much money is being created with fed money printing and the Powell and senator Karen yelling into the air for no reason.

It's all been well documented.

We're seeing unprecedented numbers being raised by companies issuing equity and debt, as highlighted here by the FT:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

As 2022 approaches, the latest evidence from currency markets suggest the US Dollar Index $DXY could be stalling out.

Whether it resolves higher from the current continuation pattern is a key question with broad market implications. While dollar strength has been a headwind during the second half of 2021, we think it cools off coming into 2022.

In our view, there's a good chance a weaker dollar will actually help put a bid in risk assets in the near future. This hasn’t been the case in a while, so let’s discuss what’s changed to make us feel this way.

Notice the short-term weakness in our US dollar trend summary table:

The percentage of short-term bearish readings has jumped from 13.37 to 60.00 over the past two weeks. This tells us there's been a significant drop-off in the dollar’s strength versus its peers, even as the DXY coils in a tight bull flag.

Bulls want to see the dollar get stronger beneath the surface to support a resolution...

Register here for our live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts India.

January's Strategy Session will be held on Tuesday, January 4th at 7 PM IST. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with all of our past conference calls.

Here are the details for Tuesday:

Today we're introducing a new series of posts that we will include in our general analysis.

We're calling this the BASH Series. What does this mean and what do we do?

We look at stocks in the market that are experiencing extreme moves, and we share our views. So we will tell you what we'd do: Buy, Avoid, Sell, or Hold. And that's how we arrive at BASH (you have to make acronyms that make a word. Just sticks better, so bear with it. Haha!)

Today we're here to discuss RBL Bank Bank. So let's do just that.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended December 24, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

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.

...

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...

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.

A “Santa Claus Rally” For Stocks

The last 5 trading days of the year and the first two of the new year represent a historically strong period for the market. This seasonal trend is referred to as the “Santa Claus Rally” and occurs during one of the best 7-day periods based on data all the way back to 1950. The market is off to a good start as today is the first day of this period and the S&P is already back to all-time highs for the first time since November. The main support level we have been watching in recent weeks is those September highs around 4,500. Buyers dug in and successfully defended this zone twice this month, and now they are trying to make a sustained breakout back to fresh record highs. If we hold above the November and December highs ~4,700 we’re likely to see a fresh leg higher for the broader market, and particularly US large caps.

...

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 January 3rd @ 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:

Well, we're on Day 1 of the Santa Rally and so far the fat man is delivering bigly!

Speaking of deliveries, it's likely your 2021 Holiday Season featured the services of our trade today.

Let's get right to it!

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 in the green as 83% of our list closed higher with a median return of 1.58%.
• The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the winner this week, closing with a 6.49% gain.
• The biggest loser was the Volatility index $VIX which posted a loss of -16.74%.
• There was an 8% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 53%.
• 45% of our sector list made fresh...

Wall Street sell side analysts are coming out with their 2022 forecasts.

And we all know how accurate those tend to be ;)

In the latest float of the bear parade, wall street's sell side analysts are putting out some of the most bearish forecasts in recent memory.

From the WSJ,

And we already know that Individual investors (AAII) and Financial Advisors (II) are much more bearish going into 2022 than they were over the prior two years.

We're seeing almost half the amount of...

Our general approach following Bitcoin's correction is to sit on the sidelines while the market grinds sideways.

We've seen this play out, with most crypto assets trading under contracting price action.

The case continues to be if we're below the 53,000 to 54,000 zone, we want to remain patient before deploying cash into more aggressive long positions.

There have been a few exceptions that we'll discuss in today's report. But patience continues to be the prudent approach for the vast majority of names out there for now.

This week's biggest development is a dramatic rise in speculative activity, exacerbating volatility and the probability of a long/short squeeze.

This week we’re looking at a long setup in the market's favourite bullish space, IT.

IT has been displaying strength even in a sideways market. Such strength is crucial to note.

Let's take a look at what we have today!

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in mid-July last year 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.

As we enter the final week of the year, what's on your mind?

Let us know. We love to hear from you!

I'll go first.

People are so scared. They're afraid of their own shadows.

And they're quick to blame others instead of looking in the mirror.

At first glance, this might seem sad. But sad for who?

Just because you're angry doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.

I see it as opportunity.

The official period for this year's Santa Claus Rally begins on Monday December 27th.

Remember, the Santa Claus Rally includes the last 5 days of the year, and the first 2 days of the following year. So this year's SCR starts on Monday Dec 27th and runs through Tuesday Jan 4th.

The first half of December wasn't the best time for stock investors. But keep in mind that historically, it's the second half of December that's the most bullish time of this month for stocks.

So what should we expect for this year's Santa Claus Rally?

Well, for me it's less about Santa showing up and more about the implications of him not showing up.

Let me explain.

It's Saturday Sunday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts: