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

Today we're turning our attention to key commodity currencies for insight into the US dollar's next directional move.

Check it out!

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by General Atlantic LP.

The hedge fund reported an additional purchase worth roughly $7 million in HireRight Holdings Corp $HRT.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I think it could be a decision day for the indices, and we're either setting up for a ripper or a decent drop.

The $SPX needs to get above 3,972. If it does, we can see 4,000-plus.

Otherwise, we can see 3,922, then 3,860.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza 

While there have been some real winners during the recent rally, the run off the lows from this fall has also left many stocks behind.

Value stocks, cyclicals, and blue-chip names have prospered for the past two months, as groups like financials and industrials have been the latest beneficiaries of sector rotation. 

At the same time, mega-cap technology and the most-speculative growth areas of the market have continued to show relative weakness.

To be clear, it’s not like these stocks have been crashing lower while the rest of the market rallies. Of course, many have participated in the upside action.

But, on balance, the performance from growth stocks has been lackluster.

The disparity between the growth-heavy Nasdaq 100 and the value-heavy Dow Jones Industrial Average perfectly illustrates what’s taken place:

The Dow has rallied almost 20% off its October low, retracing more than 62% of its year-to-date drawdown. Notice how it briefly reclaimed the August highs...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The 2020 V-shaped recovery has warped investors’ brains. 

But this is nothing more than recency bias. In reality, bottoms are a process, not an event. 

Don’t fall victim to what’s easy or comfortable. Instead, let’s focus on the facts.

Markets continue to send mixed signals, testing the resolve of even the most disciplined investor. Rather than fight the trend or trendless nature of the markets, I prefer to identify evidence that supports the next directional move.

And there’s one insightful chart atop my deck regarding the direction of the US dollar.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Overall, the market acted weak today.

The $SPX remained below its eight-day moving average, which is at 3,972. This index came close to touching support at 3,933.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The trend for the S&P 500 has now fallen for 34 weeks in a row. That is the longest sustained decline in the trend since the Financial Crisis ended over a decade ago.       

Why It Matters: Since 1950, the trend for the S&P 500 has been rising nearly 70% of the time. In the process the index has climbed from below 20 to above 4000. During a majority of this time (from the 50s through the 80s) extended periods in which the trend was rising were followed by extended periods in which the trend was falling. Downtrends started to get shorter & shorter in the 90s and outside of the bursting of the internet bubble  (2000-2002) and the Financial Crisis (2007-2009) that has remained the case. Even the COVID crash came and went so quickly that a down-trend hardly had time to emerge. Outside of the two episodes in the 00s, the current downtrend is proving to be the most persistent since the late 1980s. Investors that have been conditioned to quick downside...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Portfolio Update: As mentioned in yesterday's Market Notes, our tactical models are arguing for patience rather than aggressiveness with respect to equity exposure. That being said we want to stay in harmony with relative opportunities as they emerge. While not putting new money to work, we have tweaked the holdings in our Dynamic Tactical Opportunity Portfolio.

The co-founder and executive chairman of Energy Transfer $ET, Kelcy Warren, reappears on our list today.

Warren reported an additional buy of roughly $16 million.

We like to keep things simple and remove unnecessary complexity.

As far as we've been concerned, over the last few years -- and particularly since the November high -- Bitcoin has merely followed legacy markets.

For the longest time, it's been all about correlations. Has this made our job slightly boring? Sure, there's no doubt.

As technicians, we love having multiple uncorrelated asset classes at our fingertips. The more assets with their own idiosyncratic drivers away from systemic risk factors, the better.

But we need to see the market for what it is and profit from what ultimately pays, and that's price.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Futures are up this morning.

What we want to see if this market is going to head higher is that we get above $SPX 3,977.

Support is at SPX 3,956, then 3,933.

This week, We're looking at a value stock from Healthcare Sector.

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.

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 only: because they think...

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 November 25, 2022. 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

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 positive as 79% of our list closed higher with a median return of 1.10%.
• Dow Jones Utilities $DJU was the winner, closing with a 3.48% gain.
• The biggest loser was the Volatility Index $VIX, with a weekly loss of -11.33%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 2%.
• 57% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs and...

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.

Not All Indexes Are Created Equal

While the Dow (DJI) has rallied nearly 20% off its October lows and retraced more than 62% of its max year-to-date drawdown, the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) is only about 10% above its lows, representing a roughly 20% retracement.

This disparity in index performance speaks to the relative strength from blue chip value stocks as well as the relative weakness from technology. Until we see evidence of this changing, we want to remain overweight value and underweight growth.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a down day for the market. Things felt sleepy, or just a little slow.

People are probably still traveling back from the holiday.

Our longer-term risk indicator has been in the Risk Off zone since the beginning of the year. Successive rally attempts have taken it closer and closer to a Risk On signal, but so far it has been unable to break through. 

More Context: This indicator, which is calculated based on where various intermarket & intramarket asset ratios are relative to their 52-week trading range, was the sole criteria on our Bull Market Re-Birth Checklist that did not turn positive earlier this summer and it continues to offer a cautious message. The persistence of more new lows than new highs adds weight to that view. After the latest rally off of year-to-date index lows, there is still little evidence that a sustained turn higher is in the works. Fear has been relieved but strength is struggling to emerge. Our tactical models suggest that expecting price bounces to persist is defying history. There are pockets of opportunity, but this remains an environment for selective equity exposure not broad buying and longer-term...

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

No matter what the market, geopolitics, weather, congress, The President, retail demand, the news cycle, or even the price of the commodity itself throws at oil stocks, they just... keep... winning.

These are not trends I like to fight.

And it seems options markets aren't willing to fight it either as today's trade is in an oil sector bellwether that is now pricing in the lowest volatility in over 9 months as the stock flirts with post-Covid highs.