Today we sit down with my old pal Larry McDonald.

When it comes to the bond market, Larry is the guy I want to talk to. And with Bonds getting off to their worst start to a year, maybe ever, what better time than the present to dive into the fixed income markets?

While I had him, we also discussed the equities markets, commodities, metals and Crypto.

This was a fun one.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I caught the last 30 minutes-ish of the live Elon Musk interview on TED Talks Thursday morning and I found it riveting. Sadly, I missed most of the discussion regarding his recent splashes with Twitter.

Picking up when I did, there were other things I should’ve been doing (writing this note, for example), but I was immediately hooked. I couldn’t peel myself away from it.

It felt like a real earnest look into the mind of a savant.

Say what you will about Elon Musk the Man, Elon Musk the Innovator, Elon Musk the Political Animal, or Elon Musk the Podcaster and Tweeter. I’m not here to pass any judgments on who he is, what he stands for, or how he accomplishes his aims.

What stood out for me during the chat was the laser focus he has on things he puts his mind to.

When he mentioned that he understands deeply how EVERY piece of his cars are made and assembled, and when he uttered that there is nobody on Planet Earth currently living who knows more about manufacturing then him, I believed him. He wasn’t trying to impress us with this information. He was saying it matter-of-factly.

I read a book recently that got into the fact that any and all edges in trading, no matter how robust, degrade over time.

The author listed a variety of reasons, but the biggest one that caught my attention is that if the edge is so good, then the simple act of making a bunch of money exploiting this edge will eventually get discovered. 

This is an incestuous business where people talk. Brokers talk to their clients. Clients talk to their industry contacts. Word gets around about so and so making all kinds of money.  And then copycat traders act and move in to also take advantage of said edge. And this crowding in will work to eventually minimize or trivialize the edge.

Then it’s back to square one. 

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

Commodities are off to another record year -- and it’s only April!

Crude oil and friends are leading the charge as the energy-heavy CRB Index is up 34% year to date. 

Oil ripped above 100 in February and has been in a corrective phase since. The energy complex remains red-hot though, with natural gas futures breaking to fresh 13-year highs this week.

While crude oil finds its footing, its derivatives -- heating oil and gasoline, are coiling just beneath all-time highs and gearing up for some massive base breakouts.

We’re also seeing some bullish data points for the broader oil and gas industry as crack spreads are expanding and signaling a healthy demand for black gold. This bodes particularly well for oil refiners.

All of this price behavior is what we like to call rotation.

It's an essential characteristic of any real bull market, and it’s exactly what we’re seeing from commodities these days.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats.

In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money."

Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

Treasury Bonds have collapsed in recent months as interest rates have rallied to their highest levels in years.

And it’s not just treasuries, the trend is lower for corporate bonds as well.

While fixed income markets have experienced steady selling pressure since 2021, downside volatility has accelerated in recent months. Following the worst Q1 returns in decades, bonds have continued to plunge to kick off the 2nd quarter.

The best way for us to take advantage of this is to keep finding clean setups to short.

Today, we will outline a couple of shorts in high-yield debt and discuss what a sustained downtrend for these bonds could mean for the broader market.

First up is the High-Yield Corporate Bond ETF $HYG:

These are the registration details for our live mid-month conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our next Live Call will be held on Monday April 18th 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 Monday night:

Individual investors with way too much exposure to growth stocks are not happy.

In fact, they're the most pessimistic they've been in 30 years.

Last time individual investors were this bearish, Baby Got Back and Achy Breaky Heart were topping the music charts.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Yes, it's tricky both tactically and mentally to get long in the stock market right now. One look at the broader indexes would give any rookie market technician pause.

That said, there are still pockets of strength that are working and growing stronger --- both on a relative and an absolute basis. Which, by the way, is not uncommon. Even in the most vicious bear markets, there are often certain sectors that see gains. And so a bear market may force us to be more selective when searching for bullish bets, but the opportunities are there for those willing to do the work.

With that in mind, today's trade is one of those names that is thriving in this current market environment.