From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

Today's trade is going to leverage the rising volatilities introduced into the stock market this week thanks to testimony from the Federal Reserve Chairman (I've been told).

When markets get dicey and volatility rises, I like to look at my universe of Sector ETFs and choose one that is both displaying higher relative options prices than its peers and looks set up for rangebound trading action over the next 3-5 weeks.

An ETF near the top of my list is the Materials sector ETF $XLB. We're going to bet on the recent sloppy trading action to continue sideways for a bit, and we're going to sell a delta-neutral spread to collect premium and position ourselves to earn the decay.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our March Monthly Strategy Session on Monday night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

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

Dollar and rates were big themes last year – rising in tandem – and continue to be as we head into March.

It shouldn't come as a surprise as the next chart reveals the crux of the story…

Check it out!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What year is it? 

Is it 2023 or 2022? Because it’s starting to feel like last year all over again…

No, Will Smith hasn’t slapped anyone (that I’m aware of). And I’m confident Bennifer 2.0 is going strong (solely based on Superbowl commercials).

But that’s not my concern. Here’s what does have my attention: the dollar and rates. 

These were big themes last year – rising in tandem – and continue to be as we head into March.

It shouldn't come as a surprise as the next chart reveals the crux of the story…

Check out the overlay chart of the US dollar index $DXY and the US 10-year yield $TNX with a rolling 126-day correlation in the lower pane:

Last night was our Live Conference Call that I host at the beginning of each Month.

It gives us an opportunity to take a step back and identify the direction of primary trends.

This is helpful, because without understanding the environment we're in, how could we possibly pick and choose which tools and strategies to incorporate?

This step often gets forgotten about by investors.

Many would rather just shove their strategy down the market's throat whether it makes sense for that environment or not.

I find that foolish.

One chart that I thought told an important story last night was the Nasdaq Composite plotted with the New Highs - New Lows list.

It shows the bottoming "process" taking place beneath the surface:

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 3, 2023. 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.

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.

Silver is clawing its way back after breaking down from a month-long consolidation and undercutting a critical shelf of former lows.

As we talked about last week, it all comes down to risk appetite. Silver bid speaks to a healthy risk-seeking environment favoring all precious metals.

And that's what we saw last week...