We're officially half the way through this year's Santa Claus Rally.

I like to check in on this one as it goes on because of the impact it's had on past markets.

It's a week full of trades!.

There are so many opportunities out there in this stock market that keeps on grinding higher.

The bulls continue to get rewarded throughout the back half of the year and we see no evidence of that slowing down.

Yesterday's Long Tesla Call is setting up nicely.

Over in our Trading Room, we traded $TSLA from the long side both yesterday and already this morning, successfully both times.

The longer-term trade looks ready to trigger as well.

In the meantime, I bought this Micron $MU that I think also provides us with a favorable risk vs reward opportunity.

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday January 3rd @ 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 evening:

They say never to short a dull market.

It's sure got dull, right?

Bitcoin's volume and volatility have taken a summer holiday, with the biggest cryptocurrency's monthly Bollinger bandwidth contracting to its third-lowest level in the last five years.

We've referenced this chart many times this year, giving us a great heads-up on when to anticipate volatility.

Just take a look at this volatility contraction...

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 the stocks showing 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.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What a year for currency markets!

The USD/JPY tested its 1998 highs marked by the Asian Financial Crisis. The British pound revisited its all-time lows. And the euro fell below parity versus the US dollar for the first time in twenty years.

But where does that leave the King Dollar heading into Q1 2023 now that it has fallen almost 10% off its September peak and many global currencies have reclaimed key levels?

Let’s turn to the charts for some answers…

First, take a look at the US dollar index $DXY:

One thing I know about this time of the year is that whipsaws thrive.

We call it Whipsaw Hunting Season.

The lack of liquidity, and lack of interest due to other life priorities, creates over-extended and exaggerated moves that otherwise would not be allowed to occur under normal supply and demand conditions.

But since the b-squads are on the desks, you regularly get failed moves this time of the year that result in very fast moves in the opposite direction.

For some great examples see $GDX in December 2016 and check out $TLT in December 2013, among many others.

These were nasty failed moves that ripped the short sellers' faces off into the new year.

We see these sorts of moves born around this time every single season. It's perfectly normal market (human) behavior.

So as we go hunting this year, Tesla really stands out as a potentially great candidate.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended December 23, 2022. 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.

You go on the twitter and all you see are people complaining about what a bad year this is for stocks, how bad the stock market is, recessions, bear markets, the Fed, blah blah blah.

I don't understand. What's everyone so angry about?

Stocks continue to do well. In fact, the back half of this year has been one of the better ones that we've ever seen.

Look how well most sectors have done since the market bottomed in June:

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Merry Christmas!

I hope you enjoyed these last few days shutting off, spending time with your family, and eating good food.

Unlike most of the world, it's summer in New Zealand. Over here, we spend our Christmases in the hot sun, swimming, and enjoying the outdoors.

It's a great vibe.

But let's get a little crypto out of the way before our New Year's celebrations.

We'll keep this short, as there's simply nothing to update.

We tend to think in US Dollars.

And this is for good reason, don't get me wrong.

The US Dollar is the world's dominant reserve currency.

But what if we treated Gold like another currency instead of a commodity?

It certainly acts more like a currency. Just look at the recent moves in Commodities, both up and down. Gold hasn't exactly followed along....

So if Gold wants to behave like a currency, maybe we should treat it like one.

Here's Gold priced in some very important currencies. In other words, this is what Gold looks like if you remove your US Dollar bias: