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

Sometimes it's just best to ignore breakouts.

It's all about knowing what environment we're in and adjusting our tools and strategies accordingly. In environments like these, buying into breakouts is a dangerous game.

Seriously, take a look at the failed breakouts all over the place.

Pull up a watchlist of cryptos and you'll see a ton of whipsaws.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

I'm away for a few days enjoying Wisconsin’s Door County Peninsula. It's been great to camp and explore in what is widely known as “the Cape Cod of the Midwest.”

I'll be back Thursday for our regularly scheduled Town Hall but in the mean time, here's a quick look at our latest Bull Market Re-Birth Checklist.

Today we're going to discuss a long idea from the Services sector. It's a name you've heard of in the logistics departments. Let's take a look!

The Massachusetts-based hedge fund Wellington Management Company has been active, as it filed three separate 13Gs yesterday.

The filings revealed passive ownership stakes of about 10% in Whiting Petroleum $WLL and Steven Madden $SHOO.

In bear markets, you're going to find more stocks making new lows than new highs.

That's just basic math.

In bull markets, you'll see the opposite.

Here's what today looks like: 33 consecutive weeks of more stocks hitting new lows than new highs.

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.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood report, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended July 8, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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...

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

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.

Banking on Support

Banks, broker-dealers, and capital markets have all been underperforming despite the rising rate environment. The entire financial sector has been a disappointment since last year.

When it comes to banks, the Regional Banks ETF is an excellent indicator to measure risk appetite. When times are good, these stocks are participating. 

As you can see in the chart, price is currently holding above the AVWAPs from the 2018 highs and 2020 lows. This level represents a logical potential support zone.

Notice in the lower pane that momentum (as measured by the 14-period RSI) never reached oversold conditions during the current correction. Not many industry groups can say the same.

As long as this economically sensitive group remains above this confluence of support, it is a positive for the overall market.

...

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:

• Our macro universe was mixed this week as 51% of our list closed lower with a median return of -0.14%.
• The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was this week's biggest gainer, rallying over 20 basis points.
• The biggest loser was the Volatility Index $VIX, with a weekly loss of -7.72%.
• There was a 2% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 11% of our macro list made fresh 4...

As Strazza mentioned in our Telegram live chat this morning: "Not too many charts look as good as this one right now."

It feels hard to comprehend that we're finding leadership in Chinese tech, internet, and auto stocks, but it's happening. Politicians lie. Prices don't.

And one name we've got an eye on has been coiling in an extremely bullish high flag pattern.

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

In our last letter, we reviewed the recent quarter and provided a structural view of the market.

In a tape as messy as this, we're focusing a good portion of our strategy on longer time frames. The market has been and continues to be a mess on shorter time frames, while equity markets still firmly reflect risk-off behavior.

With the market providing extreme readings, these are conditions by which we can anticipate a mean-reversion rally higher. At the same time, trying to catch this move in a period of continual whipsaws will be difficult.

The market has work to do.

We've been in a Bear Market since February of 2021 when stocks peaked. Since then it's been a slow deterioration ultimately hitting almost every sector, with some areas just getting absolutely destroyed.

But just to keep it simple, the bottom line is we're below overhead supply in almost every case. There are exceptions, but I think the S&P500 shows what's really going on for the average and median stock or sector.

This is a top, and price is below former support:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why we’re turning our attention to the future aristocrats.

In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we’re curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are “stocks that pay you to make money.”

Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

By adding our technical...

The engagement between Elon Musk and Twitter $TWTR is not going to end easily or quietly.

The mercurial entrepreneur tweeted a provocative meme early this morning, depicting himself as a big-brained genius for using legal mechanisms to force accurate bot data out of the Twitter board.

You hear people talk about Dow Theory all the time don't you?

What you might not know is that there's a lot more to Dow Theory than you think.

In fact, that whole DJ Industrials & Transports confirming or diverging from one another is not even in my top 5 most important Dow Theory Tenets.

You can read about what's actually important about Dow Theory here. Give it a read and then ...

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.

I’ve written in the past about how I had been invited to join a local Improv Comedy group here in Colorado for a one-off show back in May.

While this may sound random, I do actually have some professional improv training. I took a year of classes at Chicago’s famous Second City Theater and then a couple more sessions at Improv Olympic (also in Chicago) back in 2006. It was just for fun. I had no illusions of ever becoming an actor of any kind.

Well, the show I was invited to participate in back in May went off without a hitch. We played in front of a sold-out room (it only seats 110 people) and by all accounts, it was a fantastic success. For me personally, I was just happy I didn’t suck! LOL!

We were eventually invited to come back again and I was once again asked to participate.

When you look at as many charts as I do, you quickly start to notice when certain charts just don't look like most of the others.

Healthcare is one of those.

We discussed it all on this week's Live Conference Call. Premium Members click here to watch and download the slides.

And if you're not a Premium Member yet, just give us a call and we'll set you up: (323) 421-7910

The Healthcare conversation we're having is a really important one. Notice how with S&Ps, Nasdaq and other major indexes breaking down and completing tops, Healthcare has just traded sideways.

We call this, "Relative Strength":

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.