A funny thing happened back in May.

The Cyclicals stopped going up. You can see it in the NYSE Advance-Decline line, which has been falling ever since.

But you can really see it when you overlay the Industrials with Materials and Financials.

Chop Chop Chop:

This is the video recording of our September 7, 2021 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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

In last week’s Currency Report, we highlighted the NZD/USD cross as a means to express our bearish US dollar thesis.

The setup was too good to resist taking a swing at following the recently failed breakdown. And so far, we’ve been rewarded for it. That’s information.

But it’s not the only cross that continues to trend well against the US Dollar. We see it all over, and it’s only reinforcing our bearish thesis.

As such, we want to look for more opportunities to take advantage of this developing theme.

In this week’s post, we’re going to do just that.

Let’s drill into our forex universe now and identify some of our favorite risk/reward setups we want to bet on to capture profits from a weakening US dollar. 

As the third quarter winds to a close, the bulls just took the lead for the first time since early in the 1st half.

Everything is clicking for them and they're in control of the game right now. While it's been a nice comeback, it's still just 52 to 48, so they have plenty of work to do.

I'm not talking about basketball. Not the Chicago bulls. I'm referring to stock market bulls and the current score on our risk checklist.

It's currently at its highest reading since we started publishing it back in June, so we'd be remiss not to write about it.

It's been a great roadmap for us in recent months so let's have a quick look at what it's saying now as well as some of the more recent developments that have taken place.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: New highs lists expand as global markets show strength. Economic recovery falling short of expectations. Bond yields look ready to rise.

• The Real Estate and Health Care sectors are relative strength leaders up and down capitalization levels. The Consumer Staples sector is a relative laggard across the cap scales.
• Health Care strength can be seen on the industry group heat map with positive readings for the Pharma, Biotech & Life Sciences group. While the Consumer Staples sector is weak overall, the large & mid-cap Food & Staples Retailing groups are improving.

One of the first lessons you learn in technical analysis kindergarten is the principle of polarity.

That is, former support turns into resistance, and vice versa.

The thinking here is that when buyers absorb all the overhead supply looming at resistance, the market has nowhere to go but up. When the market breaks out and retests that former resistance, it turns into support on the way down.

This language of supply and demand is true everywhere, but particularly so in cryptocurrencies, where there are no earnings, dividends, and discounted cash flow models to dilute the necessity of price.

So, with this all said, is this a textbook example of polarity taking place in Bitcoin?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Ian Culley @ianculley

In last week’s Commodity Report we highlighted the Uranium ETF $URA and promised to dig up some trade ideas within this outperforming group of stocks.

While everyone was enjoying the Labor Day weekend, barbecuing, and watching football - we were pouring over our Uranium universe to uncover the best risk/reward opportunities in the strongest names. 

But hey, this is what we love to do!

So let’s dive right in and see what we found.

First of all, why do we like Uranium so much right now?

Both the Uranium ETF and the underlying commodity are showing leadership and breaking out of 6-year bases. That's more than good enough for us.

Now, let's look at some of the strongest stocks that we can use as vehicles to express our bullish thesis.

In any given market there is never a time when all constituents move up together and vice versa. There is always an internal substitution at play. It is this game of musical chairs that helps us identify the sectors/sections that are exhibiting outperformance.

Once we are aware of the outperforming nature of certain ticker symbols, it becomes easier to select our avenues of investment.

Keeping that in mind, we are here to discuss two representatives from the commodity universe that are displaying strength.

This week we’re looking at a long setup in the Energy sector. It's a big name and there has been a breakout in the making for quite some time now. You've probably guessed it by now.

Let's take a look at the trade idea this time around.

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 September 3, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off 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.

Watch this video for a "behind the scenes" look at our process.

...

Things are looking pretty damn good right now.

Bitcoin's got a 50 handle.

The alts are pushing to new highs.

And on-chain behavior continues to suggest accumulation on the part of long-term investors.

The bottom line is that if Bitcoin is in the 50,000's, we need to be aggressively long crypto.

And on the other side of things, alts have certainly had a good run in the last month: Solana, Cardano, Terra, Axie Infinity all come to mind...

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 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.

• Our macro universe performance was positive across the board again this week, as 77% of our list closed higher with a median return of 0.65%.
• The biggest winner of the week was Lumber $LB, which gained 12.78% as it continues to rebound off a key level of support.
• Meanwhile, the week's worst performer was the Treasury Inflation-Protected Bond ETF $TIP, which fell by -1.05%.
• We saw strength among US Large-Cap indices again...

As our team has grown over the years, so has the amount of content we put out.

If you haven't already, I would encourage you to go subscribe to our YouTube Channel so you never miss an update!

I think you're really going to enjoy it.

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.

In our monthly candlestick review, the primary theme was the long list of all-time highs. That’s never bearish. But when we looked toward the weaker areas, despite lagging behind, they’re all holding critical levels of support. When the bears can’t drag down even the worst areas, that’s information. Precious metals, energy, or in this case, airlines whipsawed below support, only for bulls to come out and reclaim control.

As illustrated here, we got about as strong of follow-through as the bulls could have wished for. Again, the fact that so many of the weakest areas just won’t break down is incredibly constructive. If bears can’t even take out airline stocks, how can they ever grab a hold of the broader market? You have to start somewhere, and right now they’re moving backward.

While it’s still too soon to draw this conclusion with enough conviction, we think that these whipsaw moves could very...

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.

Somewhere along the way I think people forgot that we're only in the market to make money.

This is a very selfish endeavor.

Who cares what other people are doing with their investments?

Why should it matter to me that someone else may or may not be trading recklessly in the NFT space?

That's their problem.

It's Saturday 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.

And make sure to check out all the fresh Monthly Candlesticks here.

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

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s mystery chart.

We questioned whether it was a rounding top reversal pattern – in which case we’d be looking for a breakdown.

Or, if it was actually a failed breakdown - and we all know what tends to follow those patterns…

The responses we received were mixed. But there were plenty of bulls who wanted to be long against the former lows and bet on a swift reaction higher.

That’s pretty much the camp we were in too. We recently wrote about all of the whipsaw action we’ve been witnessing.

We said the next critical piece of information we’d be looking for was whether or not these patterns would see some real follow-through and confirmation.

Fast forward a week or so, and we definitely have our answer.

So let’s talk about it, and more importantly, what it means for risk assets.

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

In today’s Commodity Report, we zoomed out to our monthly charts to reconnect with the primary trend. This exercise really allows us to tune out the noise on the weekly and daily charts.

As we were reviewing our charts, there was one recurring theme that kept popping up...

Pullbacks and retests.

The CRB Index retested its breakout zone near the 2018 highs ~206. 

Crude oil broke back below a 13-year downtrend line only to reclaim it in recent sessions. 

Iron ore fell right back to check in on its 2013 highs. 

And even palladium, the one bright spot in the precious metals space, pulled back to a six-year trendline. 

But guess what? Just like we’ve recently seen in many of the weakest areas in other asset classes, buyers dug in at these key levels.  

Of all these retests, one that stood out most was Uranium. 

Let’s take a look.

Here’s the monthly candlestick chart of the Uranium ETF $URA:...

Once again this month, I’m going to share info on positions that were closed in the month of August. As a reminder, our exit plans are always laid out ahead of time in each trade idea we publish. In every case, the exits mentioned below were all in accordance with the plans as laid out.

As we head towards September expiration, we have three open positions remaining with expiring September options that need our attention. Most of our delta-neutral premium-selling plays worked out in August, which makes sense considering the slow markets we just endured. Let's dive in.

Positions with September options that need monitoring:

This is the video recording of September 3rd 2021 Weekly Jam Session with Sean McLaughlin.