With stocks off to a very strong start to the year, we're certainly setting ourselves up for a positive January.

There is still about a week left, but the S&P500 is already up 4.7% so far this month.

Historically, if we finish up, and it looks like the chances of that are high, then it bodes very well for stocks throughout the rest of the year.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 20, 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.

It's the weekly Gold Rush!

The intermarket landscape provides favorable conditions for precious metals as the US dollar experiences an unabated decline.

Check it out...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Gold is running into supply.

Whether the former 2011 highs still hold any psychological significance doesn’t matter.

Gold bulls continue to find an overwhelming amount of sellers at that level. This will remain the case until demand absorbs supply.

How long will that take? It’s anyone’s guess – maybe weeks, perhaps even months or quarters.

The point is, gold needs time.

Meanwhile, silver futures are coiling within a tight range…

Check out the daily chart of gold’s crazy cousin:

It's not a secret around here that Energy stocks have been doing well.

No one here cares that some investors got caught holding the bag in those growthy tech stocks, and didn't have anywhere near enough energy exposure over the past couple of years.

It's not my fault that the S&P500 was only 2% Energy but 26% Technology.

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.

After a very strong 4th quarter for stocks, it looks like 2023 is getting started right where they left off.

But this time, it's the Nasdaq that's leading the way.

So far this year, the Nasdaq100 is up every single week.

It's largest components are driving the overall market higher.

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

Every day we have the choice to either follow the news or follow trends. I choose the latter...

Check it out!

Inflation has peaked!

Or so I’ve been told… 

Rates are rolling over, undercutting their June highs from last year. High-yield debt, including emerging-market bonds, is catching a bid.

And major commodity indexes are on the verge of breaking down.

That all sounds logical to me.

But just because inflation might begin to ease doesn’t mean I’m taking a bearish stance on inflationary assets, especially commodities.

As crazy as that may seem,  these next four charts support my case…

Check out the long-term chart of gold futures overlaid with copper:

These metals are in the process of carving out decade-long bases.

What do the movies The Wizard of Oz and The Matrix have in common? The answer is that they both are stories about artificial intelligence.  The Wizard of Oz is one of the earliest examples of this in popular culture, with the philosophical question of what types of AI matter most - was it the Scarecrow, who needed brains (computational power), or the Tin Man, who needed heart (the emotional intelligence to understand us)? 

Thanks to the efforts of early pioneers in the field like Alan Turing in the 1950s, who helped address and begin work on these problems, we can fast forward 70 years and marvel at contemporary companies like OpenAI, that have solved many of those initial challenges.  

Here at All Star Charts, we’re more old school – but we’re not outdated.  We know that the foundations of technical analysis are predicated on the study of behavioral science, and how biases like price anchoring, fear, and greed create repeatable patterns we can take advantage of. 

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: