I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago where I was going over the geographic locations of all the members of our team. These places include California, Florida, Colorado, Venezuela, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mumbai, Delhi, South Africa and the list goes on....

The gentleman asked me how I was able to find all these people.

When I told him I just sent out a tweet whenever I needed to add someone, he almost fell out of his chair.

For me this is just common sense. Others are still coming around to the power of social.

We are a team of almost 30 people now.

And we're looking to add another one, if you or someone you know is interested.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended February 18, 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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

It's a big world out there.

Our portfolios don't have to revolve around what's happening in silicon valley.

That was maybe a good way to think the past 10 years, but that's a terrible way to think today, and potentially over the next 10 years.

I have no idea. And neither do you. So maybe it will be helpful to try and keep an open mind.

But in the meantime, let's worry about the now.

On this episode of Pardon The Price Action, we continue to see cyclical stocks showing relative strength and popping up on our new highs list.

Are you still stuck in American Growth stocks, or have you moved on?

Metals and Mining stocks are also breaking out to new highs, both in the U.S. and Internationally.

The U.S. is the worst performing country in the Western Hemisphere in 2022. Are you paying attention?

Where do we go from here? What are we buying? What's the next move?

All this and more on this week's episode of Pardon The Price Action.

Check out the full video:

Here is an inside look at our weekly Crypto Strategy Session that we have every Friday.

Sometimes there are more trading opportunities than others. That really just depends on the market environment.

In today's video we talk about the Key levels for Bitcoin, how some of the strongest Alts are setting up, and how far the correlation has come between Bitcoin and the S&P500.

The theories about Bitcoin being an inflation hedge, the theories about Bitcoin being a hedge against the US Dollar and the theories about Bitcoin being its own uncorrelated asset all turned out to be wrong.

There's NO evidence in price that proves those are anything but fairy tales.

Maybe one day one of those may turn out to be true. But we need to focus on the reality of the now and the present.

What do the facts say about what's going on? Not the conspiracy theories. Just the facts.

Here's this week's live video strategy session:

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

Gold is the hot topic this week, now that it’s finally showing signs of life.

It’s impossible to deny gold’s near-term strength. But we think the setup probably needs more time to develop and work through all the overhead supply from the past few years.

Long story short, gold is still pretty messy if it's below the 2011 highs.

If and when the shiny metal makes a decisive resolution, there should be plenty of time to join in and ride the trend higher.

As for other areas within commodities, we continue to see a growing list of contracts reclaim key levels and print fresh highs.

Procyclical commodities like crude oil and gasoline might come to mind since they’re constantly in the news cycle.

But other areas, such as grains and even livestock, are also breaking to new multi-year highs.

Today, we’re going to highlight an agricultural commodity that often gets overlooked.    

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:

What do we know for sure about new all-time highs?

We know they aren't characteristics of downtrends.

New highs are something we regularly see in uptrends.

And wouldn't you know it, Gold Futures just made new all-time highs, priced in Japanese Yen.

"But I live in America, JC. Why should I care about gold in yen terms?"

Because Gold acts much more like a currency than a commodity. Haven't you noticed how practically every commodity on earth has skyrocketed the past 18 months, except Gold?

Besides, the new all-time highs in Gold priced in Yen also came along with new 52-week highs in Gold priced in both Euro and Australian Dollar.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

There’s been very little happening on our risk checklist, as evidence for risk appetite remains split between bulls and bears. 

The last time we discussed it was in our Q1 Playbook. While the list hasn’t picked a decisive direction yet, the fact that it's such a mixed bag is information in and of itself.

It's been an excellent roadmap for us in recent months, because just like the market -- our risk checklist has also been a mess. 

Let's take a look at where we stand and discuss some of the more recent developments.

Here it is, with a current reading of 44%:

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

Not all stressors are debilitating.

In some cases, stress can push us to perform at our highest level. But, of course, there are instances when opposing forces become overwhelming, making it near impossible to reach our goals.

We’ve all been there.

And the markets are no different.

While we keep tabs on our heart rate or blood pressure to gauge our stress levels, we focus on credit spreads to measure stress in the market.

Given that rates continue to rise worldwide, it’s an appropriate time to evaluate these spreads and the potential obstacles that may lay ahead for risk assets.

We recently broke down credit spreads in anticipation of them widening and outlined some charts that are driving this trend.

Read our January 27 post for more information about the ins and outs of credit spreads and how we analyze them.

Since these spreads provide valuable information on the health of the overall market, we’re going to check back in and discuss another chart that is on our radar.