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

Commodity-related stocks remain hot despite a narrative of easing inflation.

Check it out!

It's been a choppy month so far hasn't it?

This is classic behavior for February. See here.

Look at this sloppy hot mess.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by ValueAct Partners.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $10 million in Insight Enterprises $NSIT, increasing its ownership stake to 11.90%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

A complete  late-day sell-off...

As JC said, February is like a hangover from the last three months.

As a trader, I’ve grown comfortable with losing.

Losing money is part of winning over the long run.

There is no winning without losing. Sounds crazy, but traders know this to be true.

We’ve all heard that losses are lessons. They are expensive lessons, but often the most valuable. Nothing valuable comes cheaply.

During the triage phase of dissecting what went wrong, we often have “a-ha!” moments that lead to new rules and new promises, and renewed confidence. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, “the outcome will be drastically different!”

This is all well and good.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The $SPX was saved by its 21-day moving average around 4,080 and is now trying to hold above its eight-day moving average at 4,124.

Tomorrow is monthly options expiration, so we should see more volatility.

This is the video recording of the February 16th, 2023, Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche.

2/16/23 2:00 PM ET

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 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.

This week, we are focusing on the Information Technology (IT) sector.

From the Desk of Ian Culley 

I prefer to focus on price when analyzing markets. 

It’s what pays us at the end of the day. And it bakes in all the news and lagging economic data I tend to ignore.

A few weeks ago, I urged investors to track trends, not inflation.

Honestly, I was only half serious. I pay attention to the Fed and CPI data – mainly to stay aware of the increased volatility accompanying important release dates. 

But price is king. And when I look at my charts, the narrative of easing inflation appears suspect...

Check out the overlay chart of the Metals and Mining ETF $XME and the TIPs vs. US Treasuries ratio $TIP / $IEF:

These two charts move tick for tick at first glance. And a closer look at the lower pane reveals an overwhelmingly positive correlation over the trailing 126 trading days. This is why we focus on XME.

The tight correlation...

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

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

Coming off this perilous winter, strategies identifying short opportunities have been greatly rewarded. And, throughout the pandemic, it was the complete opposite.

Like we said in yesterday's note, half the battle is in understanding how to directionally position in the underlying trend. The simple fact of that matter is that many have been caught offside betting against names in substantial drawdowns.

Names like Coinbase, Marathon Digital, and, most recently, Silvergate have all sported notable short interest coming off this bear market.

Identifying this skew, we reintroduced our Freshly Squeezed scan. The idea is rather intuitive; we're simply looking for stocks that people are betting against. When a stock is heavily shorted, we know there are incremental buyers waiting in the wings.

As Strazza said in the latest Freshly Squeezed report,

We love this as new buyers are the one true catalyst for higher prices. When shorts are proven wrong, they have to buy their shares back to close out their...

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

Despite the overarching range-bound action and intraday indecision across the currency markets, I continue to find trade setups with well-defined risks.

Check it out!

Director Richard F. Wallman filed a Form 4 revealing the acquisition of 1,000 shares of Roper Technologies $ROP, valued at roughly $424,950.

There was a 13G filed by Millennium Management, which reported a passive ownership stake of 5.90% in Evolus $EOLS.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

So, either the $VIX is broken or the market is.

The VIX was down more than 15% over the past few days, whereas the market isn't really moving.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey...

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

Our Hot Corner Live Strategy Session was full of new bullish chart patterns today.

There was little need to discuss the latest bullish developments for the broader market, as the individual setups painted a clear picture of continued breadth expansion.

If you missed it, be sure to check it out. And if you want to see what a bull market slide deck looks like, it's right here.

We're seeing growth stocks resolve higher from bearish-to-bullish reversal patterns. More and more small caps are popping up with new highs. And the strongest value and cyclical stocks that have been leading for years are breaking out to new record highs.

We're buying all of them.

Today, we have two financials and one industrial name. They're all making new all-time highs. Let's take a look.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

So many names were running higher today, but $SPY just kind of stood still while $QQQ had lift off.

Stock selection is key.

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche

Last week was the first time in 45 weeks that the weekly AAII survey showed more bulls than bears. The most recent stretch of pessimism did not eclipse the Financial Crisis in terms of intensity (the bull-bear spread bottomed last year at -43%, versus -51% in March 2009).  But it did set the record for persistence.

Why It Matters: This newfound optimism is leading to some concern that the rally off of last year’s lows has run its course. This is based on the idea sentiment is always best used as a contrarian indicator. Leaning against sentiment tends to be most successful after it has reversed at extremes. The path higher for stocks becomes more clear as bulls replace bears. Rallies that are accompanied by rising optimism tend to be more sustainable. Optimism becomes a headwind after it becomes excessive and begins to fade. While on the watch for excesses, mostly we are seeing investors finally beginning to embrace stock market strength. At this point in the cycle, strength fuels optimism and optimism fuels strength. Increasing optimism after persistent pessimism is a welcome sight.

In...