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.

There's only one thing you need to know about Bitcoin miners. That is, they're essentially long Bitcoin's price, short the hash rate, and short electricity prices.

Wonder why publicly traded Bitcoin miners have been laughable? It's because all these three are moving in the completely opposite direction.

One of the things that continues to really stand out to me is the relentless outperformance in Energy stocks, even in the midst of a major correction in Crude Oil.

You can see it perfectly in this chart. Energy stocks today are making new 52-week highs relative to Crude:

The bond market is the biggest and baddest market of them all.

All these crypto currencies can go to zero and no one who matters will care.

The entire pot industry can disappear tomorrow and it won't matter.

Small-cap stocks aren't relevant, from a systemic perspective.

Do you know what matters? The bond market.

And if there's real stress out there in financial markets, you are going to see it show up in bonds.

It's just math.

But a funny thing happened in Q2 this year. High Yield Credit spreads began to tighten.

If there was real stress, you would be seeing them widening.

In this chart below we're looking at lower lows in the S&P500 but higher lows in the ratio between Junk Bonds and US Treasury Bonds:

This is the video recording of the October 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• The DJ Industrial Avg at the Pre-Covid Highs
• Fewer Stocks are making New Lows
• Small-caps, Mid-caps & Micro-caps diverging positively
• Sentiment is at a historic bearish extreme
• Credit Spreads tightening the past 4 months
• Negative Correlation Between US Dollar & Stocks intact
• Consumer Discretionary outpacing Staples
• Sector Level trends are improving
• Energy making new 52-week highs relative to Stocks
• Shorting these REITs and Software Stocks
• Industrials & Regional Banks making new 52wk relative highs
• More Bullish Options Activity in Occidental Petroleum
• Coal Stocks Setting Up For Breakouts
• Industrial Stocks ready to bounce
• Financials holding Support
• Copper/Gold ratio not confirming new highs in Yields
• 5 & 10/yr Breakevens peaked quarters ago
• Emerging Markets down near critical levels
• Seasonally the best time to buy stocks
• List of my favorite stocks to buy

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I don’t care what your favorite TikTok financial guru says: Trading isn’t easy.

The market has made this point again and again this year.

The market has also driven home another essential truth: Trends persist.

I talk about this approach quite a bit because I’m a trend-follower. It’s my favorite Dow Theory Tenet, and it's the foundation of my approach to the markets.

Trend-following might sound simple. But it’s far from effortless. Like any worthwhile philosophy, real-world applications can sometimes be a struggle. 

In fact, no other market has tested my trend-following resolve quite like this year’s unstoppable dollar. And I’m still looking for opportunities to get long…

It's that time of the quarter where we options swing traders need to be extra mindful of pending earnings releases. The last thing we want to do is place a directional bet in a stock or it's options heading into a binary event that could decapitate us in a heartbeat.

This is frustrating us right now because most of the charts we like best (both the bullish and bearish ones) are in stocks with earnings slated to be released in the next week or two.

During our morning Analyst meeting today, we discussed the fact that many of the banking/financial sector stocks have already reported earnings by now, therefore, this is a place we should look.

Specifically, we like the big money center mega/multinational banks that are represented best by the $KBE ETF. Here is a chart that paints a pretty good picture of why we like it:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is working on its 3rd straight week of gains.

In case you missed it, you have to see the look on Maria Bartiromo's face after I told her Friday that we're 4 months into a new bull market.

Priceless.

I think she was into it though. Check out the full clip on Fox Business here: Mornings with Maria

This weekend I published a note about how underrated I find the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be among traders and investors.

The Dow is not something I want to fight. In fact, I was specifically taught not to.

Make sure to check out some of my favorite Dow stocks to own right now.

But today I want to focus on sentiment. More specifically, the extremes in bearish sentiment and overall pessimism.

You hear it every day.

Are you bullish or bearish?

Like, what does that question even mean?

Which asset class are we talking about?

What time frame?

What sector?

It's a question that only journalists should ask. People with skin in the game understand that strong opinions will always be weakly held when money is on the line.

Our opinion never matters. What does matter is how we adapt our approach as new evidence comes in that either corroborates or contradicts our initial thesis.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ending October 14, 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.

I don't know how you were taught to approach markets.

But I still have Ralph Acampora in my head. I can still hear him yelling, "Don't Fight Papa Dow!!"

He's referring, of course, to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and respecting the direction of its trend, and its components.

We just saw back to back positive weeks for the Dow Industrials for only the 4th time in 2022. See here.

This weekend I published a note about how underrated I find the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be among traders and investors.

Not sure why people get so upset about the Dow. I find it really valuable and shared some of my favorite hacks here.

The Dow is not something I want to fight. In fact, I was specifically taught not to.

So here's what this looks like. You can see the Pre-Covid highs that were taken out in Q4 2020. And now here we are, back to the scene of the crime.