From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

With the dollar beginning to rise, gold and silver are coming under some selling pressure.

Nevertheless, these shiny rocks and their related mining stocks are hanging tough.

Instead of getting bent out of shape, I plan on using the recent bout of selling as an opportunity.

When markets come under pressure, it’s time to identify the most resilient names. 

Why? 

The strongest stocks will likely lead the next leg higher.

Some call it the “beachball” effect. These names tend to rip higher after sellers fail to submerge these stocks.

And I have a potential beachball of a gold mining stock I want to share with you today…

When I last wrote to you, I was mired in a spiral of frustration as I grappled with understanding what went wrong with one of my strategies, what I missed that opened the door to a larger-than-expected loss, and how to move forward.

I’m happy to report that I’ve come out the other side.

The only way out is through.

That’s always been true for me, at least.

My wife can attest: up until yesterday, for a week I’d been walking around like a grumpy zombie, lost in repetitive thought, running mind simulations of hundreds of scenarios and if/then situations. 99% of the ideas were just simple regurgitations of things I tried and failed at in the past. It takes tremendous effort for me to remind myself: been there, done that.

I often waste significant time and energy rehashing old tricks I’ve employed in the past that I’d already proven don’t work as intended. Being better about journaling and reviewing said journal regularly would probably help me out with this.

What helped turn the corner for me was

The broadest measure of European equities just hit new 52-week highs last week.

As you can see here, Europe went nowhere for 20 years, mostly due to its lack of exposure to high growth stocks like the United States.

And now that those growth stocks have been out of favor, and it's the more Industrial and cyclical stocks leading the way this bull market, Europe is the global leader once again.

It's the U.S. that's the laggard.

Here's the Euro STOXX 600 hitting new 52-week highs and coming out of a multi-decade base:

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended February 17, 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.

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.

In bull markets you have leadership groups.

That's just a simple fact that you see in every cycle.

During this bull market in particular, the one that turned 8-months old earlier this week, Industrials have been a real leader.

The Industrials Sector Index Fund $XLI is the best performing sector of them all since the June lows.

Now take a look at Industrials on an equally-weighted basis relative to the S&P500 equally-weighted.

From a broader perspective, Industrials are breaking out to new 14-year highs relative to the rest of the market:

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

If you missed last month's breakout in Sugar, have no fear: It's offering us another opportunity to get long.…

Check it out!

These are the registration details for our Live Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Tuesday February 21st at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The New York Mercantile Exchange soft commodity contracts have been ripping.

Orange juice futures recently broke out of a decade-long base, coffee is up almost 20% in a month, and cocoa hit fresh 52-week highs yesterday.

Yet, of all the softs, I like sugar the most.

In fact, sugar held the No. 1 spot as my favorite chart heading into 2023. And it broke out last month!

I missed that move -- not for lack of initiative, more like access issues.

If you missed it, too, have no fear: Sugar is offering us another opportunity to get long.…

Check out the weekly chart:

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

Commodity-related stocks remain hot despite a narrative of easing inflation.

Check it out!