I’ve been tough on US equities lately. But it’s really nothing new.
Since last summer, I’ve been writing and talking about taking profits in the US - particularly in US growth - and redeploying that capital overseas.
But the truth is I’m rooting for US stocks. I always am.
So, let’s talk about what I need to see to get excited about them again.
In a few notes last week, I stressed the importance of registering two consecutive up-days at the index level. We’re not going to establish a tradable low without some bullish follow-through.
My attitude has been, “talk to me once we get back-to-back green candles.”
And while I’m really not impressed by the action at all, we did achieve this simple milestone earlier in the week. Congrats to stocks!
The bottom line is this is still a “show-me market.” Let’s discuss what bulls need to see next.
Ending a correction is a process. Hoping for a capitulation Crash is natural but a bit of a sucker's game and sort of misses the point. Getting into a crash is the same process only bigger. It's like ranking tornados; some are big, some less so but the sequence is always the same.
An Unquantifiably large negative confluence of negative catalysts starts to form. Uncertainty is bad but most people buy the dip. But then the news gets worse. And relentless. The selling builds steam as consumers and businesses start missing/ guiding lower. Indices fall (>10% or it doesn't count) but the damage is way, way worse under the surface. There is no place to hide.
[Emotionally the short version is 1. "Buying the dip, thanks for the free money, Market". 2. "I'm still up huge and can ride this out" 3. "I should have taken some profits" 4. "It's that idiot's fault I'm losing money and I hate Bankers/ Traders / Shorts and this is all a scam" 5. "Capitalism has failed. I'm selling and living in an RV"]
Then we bottom.
We've checked a lot of the required boxes for a bottom to at least get started at this point. The market is still wobbly but the brutal, indiscriminate...
We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.
However, when it comes to this one, it couldn't be any simpler!
With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.
Welcome to TheJunior Hall of Famers.
This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.
There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.
General Mills $GIS slid lower on Wednesday after reporting mixed earnings.
The company's margins are contracting because of inflationary pressures. Last quarter alone, the gross margin fell 60 basis points to 33.4% of net sales.
In addition, the North American, pet, and international segments experienced a 7%, 5%, and 4% decrease in net sales, respectively. It wasn't good...
The management team discussed consumer confidence at levels last seen in 2008. This is a big problem for a company directly exposed to the consumer!
Overall, this report was a disaster, and the market punished the stock for it.
Here are the earnings stats from the report 👇
*click the image to enlarge it
As you can see, the $32.63B packaged foods company reported revenues of $4.84B, versus the $4.95B estimate, and earnings per share of $1, versus the $0.96 estimate.
The stock fell 2% with a reaction score of -2.99, and it's now flirting with fresh 4-year lows.
Now, let's talk about the technical setup.
GIS has been punished for 7 of its last 10 earnings reports 👇
The dominant force in equity markets right now is the record rotation out of U.S. equities and into international markets.
The biggest losers over the past month? U.S. growth stocks. And at the tail end of that risk spectrum, speculative growth—best represented by ARK Innovation (ARKK)—has taken the hardest hit, dropping 25% and failing to hold its long-term breakout.
We’re closely watching whether this broader rotation out of U.S. stocks sustains in the coming months. If capital starts flowing back into the U.S., ARKK would likely be a major beneficiary.
A successful reclaim of its breakout level would set up a bullish long-term trend—but everything hinges on the international vs. U.S. capital flows.
We broke all of this down in yesterday’s Emergency State of the Markets stream. The All Star Charts team joined the discussion, along with esteemed trader John Netto, who shared his insights on the Fed’s announcement.
Out of the seven global regions I track, only one is negative year-to-date, and that is the United States.
Here’s the chart:
Let's break down what the chart shows:
Each line represents a different global region's year-to-date performance.
Green lines represent global regions that have a positive year-to-date performance.
Red lines represent global regions that have a negative year-to-date performance.
The black line shows the year-to-date performance of the All Country World Index.
The Takeaway: The global leadership has shifted in 2025.
In 2024, the United States was the leading region with an impressive return of 24%, while Europe Ex-UK was the worst region which lagged behind with only a 0.9% yearly return.
However, in the 52 trading days of 2025, Europe Ex-UK has emerged as the current leader, posting an impressive year-to-date return of 19% so far. In contrast, the United States is underperforming every region among the seven I track and is the only region to...
In this scan, we look to identify the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega cap status (over $200B).
Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.
But the scan doesn't just end there.
We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.
Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.
When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...
Busy morning of earnings with a little something for everyone as we try to figure out who, if anyone, is actually experiencing a recession as opposed to just talking about it all the time.
This morning saw a decent report from the dominant player in the dismal wedding-focused jewelry space in Signet, deep-discount treasure hunt chain Ollies and the magnificent Williams-Sonoma, stuck in the middle of a rare sell-off.
Let's grade them!
Report Card Rules:
All grades are subjective and relative to each company's reputation, messaging and likely appeal to Wall Street.
I don't much care about Q4. Does anything seem longer ago right now than last Christmas? Q1 reports in retail are all about setting expectations for the next year, establishing clear deliverables and highlighting any tailwinds or concerns.
TLDR: These stocks are all way off fairly recent highs. Anything better than whining about troubling economic headwinds and guiding to something hugely negative is a Beat at this point.
Let's start in the Mall!
Signet: B+
Signet slightly beat the guidance issued in January but missed the original Q4 guidance...
Global breadth is expanding in 2025... NOT narrowing… Over 27% of world markets have made 52-week highs in the past two weeks.
Here’s the chart:
Let's break down what the chart shows:
The blue line in the top panel is the MSCI All Country World index price.
The green line in the bottom panel represents the percentage of world markets making 52-week highs over the past two weeks.
The red line in the bottom panel represents the percentage of world markets making 52-week lows over the past two weeks.
The Takeaway: If you want to know where leadership in the markets has shifted too since weakness emerged in the US, look no further than the rest of the world.
Global market breadth is improving rather than deteriorating, indicating that there is underlying strength in international markets, potentially presenting us with opportunities. However, many US investors are missing out on these because of a home-country bias and a sprinkle of recency bias. (...
For Wall Street veteran Jared Dillian, getting away from Wall Street might have been the best thing he ever did for himself.
Now living in South Carolina, he can’t be further removed from the lifestyle of your typical Wall Streeter. And he’d have it no other way, as he’s convinced Wall Street took at least 10 years off of his life expectancy.
As Jared says, his stress levels are now “basically zero.”
Milton Marmanides does the hard work that traders don’t have the time to do. He sifts through the firehose of headlines, news releases, data points, and social media to cut through the noise and deliver only the market-moving information active traders need to make smarter decisions.
And in his nearly 25 years in the business, first as a trader, and now as a market data provider, he’s seen a lot.
They are only losses if we don’t learn something from the experience.
When traders woke up on Monday, August 5th to the VIX at 65 and the Nasdaq index down 5% overnight, they didn’t need a cup of coffee to snap into high alert.
The easy first question to ask was: “What happened?”