From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The Scales are tipped toward risk and away from opportunity.

A challenging macro backdrop is weighing on the market and unsustained rally attempts have kept Breadth and Trends & Momentum from joining Sentiment as reasons to look for opportunity.

Our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard fills in the details and includes a few high-level charts that we are watching as we head into the 2022 homestretch.

I thought last night's call went well.

Sorry it went a little long and had 200 charts.

I get carried away sometimes ;)

But I tried to hit on the most important points.

ASC Premium Members can watch the replay here and download the slides.

And speaking of important points, isn't this the exact point in time to be buying stocks?

From a seasonal perspective, the time is now:

From a seasonality standpoint, this is where you buy stocks.

Sentiment is near wash out levels. Who was left to sell?

Today on BNN Bloomberg I was asked about why we were buying stocks.

I think it adds some value to talk about the risk management procedures as well. And also which stocks we want to be buying.

Here's the full clip:

Yesterday, we briefly addressed the precarious lack of volatility within crypto markets.

It's piqued our curiosity to see crypto volatility dampen while risk markets have continued to sell off in recent weeks. This comes as equities lost their June lows, where downside volatility looked poised to follow through.

But, this week, risk appetite has shown a completely different face.

The S&P 500 is back above the lows, putting in a failed breakdown.

What's more is that both Ethereum and Bitcoin have risen in conjunction with equities, supporting the case that the conditions for a countertrend rally have been set.

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

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

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

What a big bounce this morning. Unfortunately, I didn't hold the $SPY overnight, which was a bad miss.

I've been looking for this 373 zone since last week, and we might just get there today. The exact level is 373.44.

The most significant insider activity on today’s list was reported in a series of Form 4 filings by Greg Abel, the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.

Abel reported purchases worth roughly $68 million in Berkshire’s class A shares.

The transactions help to align the executive more closely with shareholders as he prepares to take the reins of the company at some point in the future.

This is the video recording of our October 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we're covering all the action for the week ended September 30, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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 on large institutional purchases, unusual options...

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 Kimmy Sokoloff

Today was the first "up" day since last Wednesday.

The question is whether we'll follow through or not.  I wish I had a crystal ball, but I do not.

Commodity Trend Rolls Over

You need to squint to see it, but the long-term trend in the CRB Commodity index fell last week for the first time since the end of 2020. 

The Details: This uptrend, the most persistent since 2002-2006, lasted 94 weeks. During that period, the CRB index was up nearly 70%. Over the past two decades, the CRB index has been trending higher 60% of the time and has risen at a  7.3% annual rate during those periods. It has fallen at 5.5% annual rate during the remaining 40% of the time (when the long-term trend has been falling).  

More Context: Commodities are still in positive territory for 2022, but are as far off their highs as are stocks. They now join stocks and bonds in downtrends, making an already unprecedented market environment even more challenging from an asset allocation perspective.  

Our Deeper Look looks at the absolute and relative trends across the...

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.

Dow Leads Down

Not only is the Dow trading at its lowest level since November of 2020, but momentum is confirming the move with its lowest reading since the COVID-crash back in Q1 of 2020. 

The summer lows we’re watching coincide almost perfectly with the pre-COVID highs around 29,600. This confluence of interest reinforces the importance of the current level. As long as the indexes are below their summer lows, sellers are in control.

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 81% of our list closing lower for a median return of -2.02%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the winner again, closing with a 5.68% gain.
• The biggest loser was Dow Jones Utilities $DJU, with a weekly loss of -9.20%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• Only 6% of our macro list made fresh 4-week...

Put September and Q3 in the books. It was one to remember.

But we're turning the pages to October today and the rally in the markets is helping to reveal where the new strength may emerge for the next bull run, as well as some significant levels of support for beaten-down stocks and sectors.

Today's trade is fading the recent volatility against a key nearly year-long level of support in a sector that got badly beaten last month.

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

It's been impossible to ignore.

I'm sure you've noticed it.

Equity markets have been selling off hard, while Bitcoin and crypto have been flat.

The primary driver of Bitcoin and crypto price action, more generally, has been the tight trading correlation to legacy markets. In fact, the two have been trading tick-for-tick over the last year now.

So Bitcoin's volatility in the face of the recent risk-off action in equity markets has our attention.

But is this a new trend? Is Bitcoin finally going to decouple here, or is this just a temporary bout spurred on by unique conditions?

Asset prices haven't been going up.

Not sure if you heard....

The gloom and doom on twitter over the weekend was pretty epic wasn't it?

And it's probably well-deserved.

The S&P500 just went out at new 22-month lows.

Gold investors were convinced by con artists that it was an inflation hedge, when it turned out to be the exact opposite all along - closing the month at new 2-year lows.

And of course, the greatest Ponzi ever - US Treasury Bond Market going out at the lowest levels since 2013:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

What a reversal on Friday in the indices!

There's not much more to say other than that September was an ugly month.