From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market finished strong yesterday, and we just might need a little breather before the next move.

This week we're looking into Capital Goods sector stocks.

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.

It starts with credit.

Bottom line.

This isn't crypto where all these shitcoins can go to zero and it won't matter to anyone who matters.

These aren't marijuana stocks that are irrelevant to global asset allocation.

This is the bond market.

This is the biggest and baddest of them all.

We're talking about almost a $120 Trillion asset class.

It's just math: if there is real systemic risk in the equities market, you're going to see it in credit.

There's no way around it.

And so how are credit spreads doing?

As tight as they have been since last summer, and getting tighter:

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

Yesterday, the US dollar index $DXY booked its largest three-day gain since it peaked in late September. So will today's bounce turn into tomorrow's rally?

I don't know. But you want to monitor these two levels for insight.

Check it out!

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The macro factors are all bearish and the market factors are all bullish. It is true that after a bottom market conditions will tend to improve ahead of macro conditions. But it is also true (and we had ample evidence of this last year) that market conditions are subject to false starts. In those situations embracing unsustainable strength can penalize investors. This a trust but verify environment in which indicators of sustained trend have more weighting than one-off signals of opportunity. With the weight of the evidence balanced between risk and opportunity, this may be a time to move toward benchmark exposure,  while focusing on areas of relative leadership and absolute strength.

Our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard fills in the details and includes a few charts that have our attention heading into February. 

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market was in wait-and-see mode with Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaking today.

After he spoke, there was a lot of whip.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Dynamic Portfolio Update: With the weight of the evidence improving, we are putting some cash to work in the cyclical portfolio while also staying well-positioned for opportunities from a tactical perspective. In both portfolios we are leaning toward strength that we are finding in equities beneath the surface and beyond our borders.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US dollar index $DXY has some extra pep in its step after posting three consecutive daily gains.

In fact, the past few days constitute its largest three-day gain since the index peaked in late September.

I think it’s safe to say the long-awaited USD bounce has arrived. The question now is whether it will turn into a sustained rally.

No one knows, of course. But these next two levels will help us prepare for an impactful dollar advance…

First, let’s zoom out…

The early 2017 high of 103.82 marks the first significant hurdle for the dollar index. Let’s call it 104.

If the DXY reclaims this key level, the conversation turns to the possibility of a  failed breakdown. For now, it’s simply pulling back to retest a critical level of former resistance.

If and when DXY bounces back above 104, that brings us to the second hurdle…

...

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

They teach you this stuff at technical analysis kindergarten.

Buy support.

Sell resistance.

Of course, in the real world, with our primitive monkey brains, implementing this into a trading system is easier said than done. Just take a look at the squeeze you're seeing in real-time in all these beaten-up growth stocks.

The permabears started shorting these names in droves when they'd already slumped into 90% drawdowns.

Talk about a reckless strategy...

When we look at the most heavily shorted stocks, Coinbase stands out with a short interest of almost 30%. With clear levels and a favorable risk/reward, we leaned on COIN as a vehicle to profit from the short squeezes taking place in recent weeks. We're seeing them all over.

Seriously, go through some of these charts.

Carvana, Tesla, and AI are all great examples -- these moves are no joke. Bed, Bath & Beyond was up over 90% yesterday!

This isn't 2022.

You can pretend like nothing's changed, or you can get to making money on the long side. Those who don't mold their strategies...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market may be in a standstill until after Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks today.

What I'll be watching for today is whether $SPY can break above 411 and trend back up to 415 or so.

The most significant insider buy on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by New York Community Bancorp $NYCB Director Ronald A. Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld reported a purchase of roughly $756,756 in NYCB.

This is the video recording of our February 6th Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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 reason...

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 February 3, 2023. 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.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based...

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.

Reclaiming a Valuable Line

From an information standpoint, the Value Line Geometric Index (VLG) is one of the best tools we have at our disposal as it represents the median stock’s performance. Seeing this index make a higher high as it reclaims its prior-cycle highs from 2018 and peak from last August is a major bullish development.

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 negative, with 57% of our list closing lower with a median return of -0.16%.
• The Dow Jones Transports $DJT was the winner with a 7.15% gain.
• The biggest loser was Oil $CL, with a weekly loss of -7.89%.
• There was a 4% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 17%.
• 36% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs, and 36% made new 13-...

It's the weekly Gold Rush!

This week Strazza and I highlight critical levels to keep on your radar in the coming days and weeks. 

Check it out...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The dollar is back and on the move.

After falling for four straight months, the US dollar index $DXY is up three days in a row. Whether the near-term dollar strength turns into a more sustained trend is anyone’s guess.

Regardless, risk assets feel the pressure as many areas begin to correct, including precious metals. 

Despite this recent selling pressure, we have clear levels to trade against when it comes to Silver and mining stocks.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market was down but pretty much range-bound today.

It was hard to gain traction on the long side, and I was stopped out of a few names.

The number of stocks making new lows remains negligible. Last week, the number of stocks making new 52-week highs on the NYSE + NASDAQ surpassed a number of prior peaks (Dec 2021, Apr 2022, Nov 2022). It’s now at its highest level since November 2021.

More Context: Everyone has their own definition of a bull market. For me, it’s when more stocks are making new highs than new lows. Bear markets tend to end when new lows drop below new highs. Bull markets are sustained when new high lists expand. We are seeing that now among individual stocks and we are seeing that at the industry group level (especially outside of large-caps). In moving from 2022 to 2023 we have transitioned from broad weakness to broad strength. Big day-to-day price swings haven’t gone away, but after volatile years (like we experienced last year) that can be slow to ebb. Most of the strength that looks sustainable is happening beneath the surface of the popular benchmarks or beyond the borders of our country. It’s a new year with new...