There's been so little to discuss and so few actionable trades that our priority right now is waiting for reliable signals to suggest a resolution from this trading range.
Price action in most crypto assets is still range-bound. It appears 46,000 is the critical level for bulls to reclaim.
There are many mixed signals, so we have no read on current price action as of the writing of this report.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Commodities have been on a tear, with the Bloomberg Commodity Index recently posting its best week since 1970 and the CRB Index rallying more than 25% year to date.
Despite the broad strength from commodities, Dr. Copper – a key economic barometer – has yet to break out like so many of its peers.
After making a new all-time high last Friday, buyers were unable to sustain the move, and price retreated into its former range.
While it’s great to see so many other contracts trending higher, bulls really need to see copper join the mix. If this is truly a new commodity supercycle, it better break out from this consolidation.
It is that important to the overall asset class.
Let’s break down the various technical scenarios for copper’s recent move and discuss what they mean for the entire space.
First, the move could have been a premature breakout:
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.
These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.
It has all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that, which you can check out here.
The Hall of Famers is simple.
We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
Sideways has been the theme for most risk assets since they peaked in the first half of last year. Markets have become increasingly messy in the time since.
If we’re talking about US equities, the market is as bifurcated as it’s been in years.
All we mean by this is that depending on what group a stock is in, it could be in a nice uptrend, but it could also be in an ugly downtrend. Stocks and other risk assets are literally moving in opposite directions these days, and doing so with some serious momentum.
At the index level, you can see this split market reflected by trendless ranges.
When we look to our risk-appetite ratios and indicators for information, we’re not getting much as the vast majority are still stuck in the same ranges they’ve been in for the better part of 12-months.
So, risk assets are a mess and most of our risk indicators are also a mess. Makes sense, right?
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.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Benchmark rates around the world have been rolling over as uncertainty sweeps across markets.
Despite the growing pessimism among investors, global yields are digging in at critical levels and bouncing higher in recent sessions.
We discussed how international yields – particularly those in developed Europe – confirmed the new highs in US rates earlier in the year.
Today, we’re going to check in on some of those same yields and see if this is still a piece of confirming evidence for rates here in the US.
With the US 10-year hovering around its breakout level at last year’s highs we’re looking for any clues we can get for whether or not these new highs are here to stay.
If the new highs in global yields are holding, that would go a long way in supporting the upside resolution in the US 10-Year.
On the other hand, if we start to see more and more yields around the world fail and roll over, the US will likely follow.
I'm sounding like a broken record about elevated options premiums and my desire to be a net seller of options, and for good reason: $VIX continues to hang tight in the 30's. And when volatility is this high, it tends to favor the premium sellers. Not every time, but most of the time.
So during our morning Analyst meeting, me and the team were kicking ideas around for putting an options trade on today. And while there are some tempting candidates for putting delta-neutral credit spreads on -- we all coalesced around the idea of leveraging the high prices of put options here into a long position in Nucor Corp $NUE:
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
US dollar strength is broadening as global currencies lose critical levels against it.
Last week, we outlined crucial support levels in the EUR/USD pair. Those levels have since given way, as sellers have taken control of this major forex cross.
Today, we’re going to highlight two other USD pairs that recently sliced through key levels, further paving a path of least resistance that favors the US dollar.
First up is the British pound, GBP/USD:
The pound has been carving out a distribution pattern for the past year.
Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 4, 2022. This report is published biweekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.
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.