Remember back in the day when crypto was its own thing?

It didn't matter what the Dow, copper, or bonds were up to because Bitcoin and crypto did whatever they wanted.

That ain't the case anymore.

Today's market is entirely different, with far more sophisticated drivers than just a few years ago.

Crypto and risk assets have become heavily correlated. And, in some respects, Bitcoin's really just been somewhat of a beta chase ever since the onset of the pandemic.

Last month, the 30-day correlation between the Nasdaq 100 and Bitcoin was an incredibly positive 0.90. They've traded in lockstep with each other.

So it's fair to say that if you're a crypto trader, it's paid to watch the macro environment.

But let's apply that thinking in reverse.

Humans are fascinating creatures.

Believe it or not, there are people still asking me if stocks will enter into a bear market.

Meanwhile over 70% of the Nasdaq fell 20% over the past year, and almost half the stocks on the Nasdaq got cut in half.

If you think that’s a bull market then you should probably check yourself into a mental hospital.

In Major League Baseball, the 40/40 Club is an exclusive group of players who are the only ones to have achieved both 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season.

The first player to achieve this milestone was Jose Canseco in 1988 as a member of the Oakland A’s – back during the “Bash Brothers” days with his steroids pal Mark McGwire.

Since then, only three other players have joined this list: Barry Bonds (1996), Alex Rodriguez (1998), and Alfonso Soriano (2006).

Here at All Star Charts, we’ve achieved a little bit of our own 40/40 dynamic as JC celebrated his birthday this week and joined me in the 40+ crowd of awesomeness. Perhaps it’s not quite as exciting as crushing home runs over the wall or swiping second base against catcher Yadi Molina. But I like to think it’s cool in its own way.

We’re not getting old, we’re getting seasoned – with a little extra sriracha.

Meanwhile,

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.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind… and they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We’ve had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn’t have to be a Russell component–it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and...

On this episode of Pardon The Price Action, we're talking about which stocks have been, and are, benefiting the most from higher interest rates.

Insurance stocks are ripping, International equities are outperforming and it's not just Energy commodities that are doing well. We're also seeing the strength in Base Metals and Agriculture.

With many Growth stocks still under pressure, which are some of the best areas to sell short?

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

Check out the full video:

What's amazing to me is how many investors have owned the wrong FANG this whole time.

Instead of owning Diamondback Energy, ticker symbol: $FANG, they owned a bunch of growth stocks.

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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.

Here’s this week’s list:

And here’s how we arrived at it:

• We filtered out any stocks that are below their May 10th 2021 high, which is when...

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

It’s only six weeks into the new year and we’re already getting a sense that commodities could very well outperform just as they did in 2021.

Evidence supporting our commodity supercycle thesis continues to mount each day, as participation across the commodity space expands.

Crude oil is breaking above 90. Base metals like aluminum and tin are hitting new all-time highs. And the rally in grains is getting back on track.

All these things suggest that last year's bull run wasn’t a simple “one and done” event.

One key difference between last year and today is strength among commodities is starting to spill over into commodity-related equities.

This is a critical development that supports our bullish thesis. 

Today, we’re going to run through some stocks, highlighting the renewed strength from some of these...

Did The Economist just call the bottom for the market?

Take a look at the latest cover.

They're asking the question, "What would happen if the markets crashed?"

As technicians, our job is to respond and react to the evidence in front of us.

The market has a funny way of punishing those who let their ego and opinions drive their decision-making instead of objectively following money flow.

We say it over and over again: As a trader, your only job is to follow money flow. Everything else is noise.

This morning, we can't help but think about the resolution from this rally seen in a handful of crypto stocks. I think Microstrategy $MSTR and Coinbase $COIN show it better than any other.

What will it be?