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

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Recently I've been listening to a wider variety of music than I have in the past. It's by design.

Each week, I've assigned myself a little goal to listen to a new album. I set aside a few hours to actively listen and immerse myself in the music -- to relax, of course, but also to consider the themes and overall messages artists are trying to convey.

It's been fun, and I'm enjoying it immensely. And it's also helped me become a better writer and opened my outlook on life more broadly.

Music is powerful. I can't imagine life without it. And one particular track from my personal list of top 10 classic hip hop pieces of all time has been stuck in my head all day.

You've heard me say it a million times by now.

It's going to be really difficult to make money long most stocks or crypto the rest of the year if the US Dollar remains strong.

Check out last night's video about what we're doing about it.

We got just a little bit of Dollar weakness starting in mid-July and stocks ripped higher. Thousands of points added to the Dow, Ethereum doubled and the average stock on the Nasdaq rallied over 40%.

We saw one of the most historic short-squeezes in history. And all it took was just a little bit of Dollar weakness. It wasn't even that much.

But then once that Dollar strength came back last month, the bid in stocks and crypto disappeared.

The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes in a 13D from Carl Icahn, who increased his ownership stake in Southwest Gas $SWX by 1%.

Icahn now owns 9.7% of outstanding shares, up from the 8.7% he reported on August 16.

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

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Did we just experience the largest bear market rally in history? 

Or did the June low mark the bottom for stocks?

Instead of getting caught up in the "bull vs. bear" debate or, even worse, attempting to pick the bottom, let’s focus on a singular fact…

US dollar headwinds persist. And whether it was the bottom or not, as long as this is the case, stocks are likely to remain under pressure.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 2, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers report.

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

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 the stock is about to move in...

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 91% of our list closing lower with a median return of -2.99%.
• The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the winner, closing with a 5.21% gain.
• Copper $HG was the biggest loser, with a weekly loss of -7.45%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 6% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs.
• ...

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.

Structural Trends Shift in Favor of Value

We just got fresh monthly candles for August last week. When we look at a monthly line chart of the growth vs value relationship, it’s hard to see anything but a recently completed double top formation and successful retest from below. The fact that this bearish reversal pattern is occurring at a critical level of interest at the dot-com bubble highs makes this price action even more significant. As long as this distribution pattern remains valid, we’re anticipating a structural reversal in this relative trend that favors value. And as shown in the upper pane, as far as the major averages are concerned, this means we want to overweight the value-heavy Dow Industrials and underweight tech-heavy indexes such as the Nasdaq 100.

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

Yesterday, we identified a number of developments in crypto and in old-school markets, suggesting it's time for buyers to step in if further damage is to be avoided.

While Bitcoin is in the process of testing support, we've seen some short-term signals of strength within the altcoins. This is a positive, but crypto assets need legacy markets to bounce here if this recent strength is to persist.

If equities can’t begin to build a bullish shape right here and now, we expect further downside. Recent US dollar strength likely needs to subside, too.

So, with our stage set, let's look at it through a more actionable lens.

What are the setups? What are we buying? What are we selling?

The most significant insider activity on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by Juan Delgado-Moreira, vice-chairman of Hamilton Lane Incorporated $HLNE.

Delgado-Moreira reported a purchase worth roughly $1 million.

This market hasn't thrown us much in the way of productive data points in recent months.

"Messier for longer" has been and continues to be our prognosis for crypto right now. Last Monday, we concluded by arguing the following:

Following Bitcoin’s sell-off, this seems like a logical place for the crypto complex to bounce or at least chop for a few weeks, especially given stretched sentiment in the futures markets.

Because the probabilities of short-term longs are rather low given the macro backdrop, we’re not going to get overly cute and tactical trying to define a setup at this support.

The higher-probability outcome appears to be further chop.

In other words, it’s just more of the same.

There haven't been any significant developments that'd sway us to carry a more bullish tone.

Bitcoin and the vast majority of the asset class are still chopping about, while macro markets have been dragged down in the most recent risk-off move within the context of a strong dollar.

But over very short time frames, there have been some signs of internal strength in the alts. This...

Stocks had a ripper of the June lows, and now many markets have digested those gains.

How they correct, and how they digest gains, gives us a lot of information.

To help put things in perspective, the S&P500 has retraced exactly 61.8% of the entire rally of the lows.

This is a perfectly normal correction:

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

Remember when the stock market peaked in February 2021?

That's when the New highs list peaked. That's when the Nasdaq Advance-Decline line peaked. That's when Chinese Internet Peaked. That's when Biotech peaked. That's when all the ARKK funds peaked.

February 2021 is when everyone had a SPAC.

Remember SPACs?

This group of "Special Purpose Acquisition Companies" was a poster-child for the excess environment of Q1 2021.

These SPACs were the biggest pieces of hot garbage on the market. And everyone wanted them.

And then the market peaked and their prices came tumbling down.

Now here we are, 18-months later. And they've just decided to delist the SPAC ETF $SPAK.

A sign of the times?

I was back on The Compound & Friends podcast this week with Josh and Michael.

They're both old friends of mine, so it's just us arguing and yelling at each other for an hour.

Always fun.

Hope you enjoy!

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.