From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Stocks have benefitted from an historic stretch of good news. Commodities suggest higher inflation may not be transitory. Global breadth trends turning higher.

With both Energy and Communication Services faltering in recent weeks, the sector leadership group has narrowed to Materials, Industrials, and Financials. Materials, which took over the top spot in the rankings this week, is the rare sector right now that has been a leader on both a short-term and long-term basis. Health Care and Real Estate (both of which made new highs last week) are climbing in the rankings and if recent strength persists could soon join the leadership group.  Our industry group heat map shows continued leadership from mid-caps overall.

The relative strength this year has been in Ethereum. You can see the 2021 performance in this Koyfin chart below.

It's been the opposite of Gold. Ethereum actually goes up in price....

I've been following a name All Star Charts has been long from the Young Aristocrats column since late last year. Strazza and the team recently reiterated the bullish setup in this stock in a report on the Space Exploration industry.

I've been waiting for a pullback to get involved, and today feels like the pullback I've been waiting for.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In our continued effort to identify individual equities that fit within our larger Macro thesis, we recently rolled out our latest bottoms-up scan: "The Minor Leaguers."

We write a post every other week where we outline some of our favorite setups from this universe of stocks.

We've already had some great trades come out of this column and couldn't be happier about the early feedback.

Moving forward, we'll be rotating this column with "Under The Hood" each week.

Ultimately, to make the cut for our Minor Leagues list, you must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters.

Then, we simply sort the stocks by their percentage from new highs. Easy done.

The idea is to catch the strongest names while they're still small and have serious upside potential. If any of these stocks ever climb up...

After some recent events over the weekend, I thought this would be as good of a time as any to remind everyone, once again, what Technical Analysis actually is....

Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market, and therefore its participants, as opposed to the goods and the services in which a particular market deals. 

If you are recognizing that the trend for stocks is up, or maybe down, you are a Technician.

If you acknowledge, in any way, that the fed purchasing bonds impacts market prices, you are a Technician.

If you think volatility for stocks is low, or high, or that the Volatility Index $VIX is even a thing, you are analyzing a price derivative of the S&P500, and therefore, performing classic technical analysis.

Are you analyzing the behavior of the market and its...

As we progress into Q1 of Fiscal Year 2021-2022, this playbook outlines our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit.

This playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates, as well as outline our views on the major nifty indices and the sector/thematic indices.

We also cover individual stocks we want to be buying to take advantage of the themes discussed in the playbook.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 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.

The Growth Vs Value Cheat Code

We’ve pounded the table about that 1.70 level being the line in the sand for the relative trend in Growth vs Value. If we’re below there - which we believe we’re likely to remain, then we want to continue to be overweight Value and cyclicals. If the ratio decisively reclaims this level then we’ll have to rethink our entire thesis, along with that of a new Commodities Supercycle. But, that’s not the bet we’re making at all.

The chart below shows Growth vs Value (IWF/IWD) overlaid with Tech vs Financials (XLK/XLF) as these are the main drivers of the two factors. We believe there is incredible information in the Tech vs Financials ratio. It was tested, and successfully defended in both April and June of last year, as well as again in early March of this year. Clearly, this area is a battleground for this relative ratio… And...

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

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 context of the big picture 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:

• Procyclical Commodities led this week, with Copper up over 4% and Lumber posting a solid 6% gain.
• With that said, the biggest loser of the week was Crude Oil (-1.57%), which is also cyclical in nature... This is a good example of how things are just messy right now.
• We had a single asset make a new low this week... The US...

This week I had a fun chat with Manish Khatta over at Potomac Funds.

He asked me a fun question, that if I could only take one chart with me, what would it be?

What do you think I said?

Give it a watch and see for yourself:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As many of you know, we run A LOT of scans here at All Star Charts. In fact, I gave a presentation about them this past weekend at Chart Summit which you can rewatch here.

In this post, we're going to share a free trade idea from our Young Aristocrats list which is one of my absolute favorites of all the various bottoms-up scans I regularly run.

The rationale behind the list and corresponding monthly column is to catch strong stocks when they are still in the early stages of their dividend growth phase* in hopes that by doing so, we'll be buying some of the future Dividend Aristocrats...

This week we're looking at a long setup in the Metal sector. There are a handful of sectors that are outperforming the market as Nifty 50 continues to move sideways, and Metal has been a consistent name there.

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

I hope you all enjoyed attending Chart Summit as much as I enjoyed hosting it!

I must say, I'm still amazed that we were able to pull that off, and I couldn't be more proud of the team behind me and the presenters virtually alongside me, who helped make it all possible.

A lot of you have reached out wondering how you can view the replays of last weekend's presentations. And well, the wait is over!

All the presentations have been archived and posted at ChartSummit.com. As a heads up, you will be required to register to the site to access the replays, which is a quick and simple process. Don't worry.

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

Pockets of strength are once again emerging within the Commodity space.

We pointed out that both the CRB Index and the ASC EW33 Commodity Index were breaking above key resistance levels, pointing to a burgeoning upside move last week.

That upside move has now materialized!

We saw Industrial Metals -- including Copper, Steel, and Aluminum -- continue to follow-through as they grind higher. 

But this week’s biggest moves came from the Agricultural Commodities.

Let’s take a look at the recent strength in Ags using our custom ASC Equally-weighted Agriculture Index.

The next leg higher has started for the Ag sector as the index sliced through a six-week consolidation. We’re also seeing similar consolidations and upside resolutions in Corn and Soybeans. 

Meanwhile, Grain markets and Lumber continue to lead the rally....

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

This week marked the anniversary of Oil busting the theory that there is firm support at $0. Oil is currently trading around $62/bbl, which puts its $100 higher than where it closed on April 20, 2020 (-$38/bbl). Our custom equal-weight commodity index (which is 15% energy and 24% industrials metals, versus 39% & 13%, respectively, in the CRB index) continues to power higher, eclipsing not only its early 2021 peak but the 2012-2014 peaks as well. While Lumber gets a lot of headlines for making new highs - strength in commodities is much broader than that. While this may lead to some concern about rising inflationary pressures, it also says positive things about global growth and the prospects for global equities. You don’t need to be a commodity trader to appreciate & benefit from the current strength in commodities.

Believe it or not, it's not just Apple that makes desktop and laptop computers. I know, some of the newer generations of consumers may be shocked to learn this.

But way back in the Before Times, there was another computer maker that dominated the consumer space and invented novel ways to deliver them to consumers.

These days, they are a long way from the mass market dominance they once enjoyed, but investors in the stock are enjoying the fruits of a resurgence.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

I recently came across a conversation about momentum…

I was excited when I first saw it -- but disappointed when it didn't actually go anywhere.

Okay that's a joke. But I did see a momentum discussion. This time, it went somewhere. It even got me thinking about my own experience with momentum when it comes to making investment decisions.

Here's the story: 

Someone on Twitter asked whether momentum investing had a godfather of sorts, an established voice that lends an air of respectability to a discipline. Think about Warren Buffett (and before him, Graham & Dodd) with respect to value investing. There were interesting comments in the thread that followed the initial post and I saw more than a few references to Cliff Asness and the work he has done at AQR. While acknowledging the work he has done with respect to momentum as a strategy, Asness himself referenced several academics who have written on the subject over the past few decades.

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

We recently held April’s Monthly Conference Call, which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll summarize the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts/topics we covered, along with commentary on each.

Let’s dive into it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @GrantHawkridge

The credit market is overflowing with information. 

We haven’t discussed it too much lately… but that doesn’t mean we aren’t paying close attention.

It would be foolish to overlook it. After all, they call Bond traders the “smart money” for a reason... Right?

We’ve recently discussed the theme and likely implications of how so many major stock market indexes - in both the US and abroad, are hitting very logical levels of overhead supply right now.

We think it’s no coincidence that all of this is occurring at the same time. And you’ll never guess what else…

We’re also seeing this very same behavior from some of the most important Bond Market ratios we track, as many are currently running into crucial inflection points.

This is the video recording of the April 22nd Town Hall Meeting w/ Willie Delwiche

04/22/21 2PM ET