Remember that Bitcoin crash in early December?

That was fun wasn't it?

The comparisons to 1987 in the S&P500 were too similar to ignore.

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

There's been a subtle risk-on tone in recent weeks. With each passing day, it's been spreading to more and more markets and charts.

Rates are rising around the globe. The underlying uptrend in commodities is intact and looks ready for another up leg. Our equal-weight commodity index is resolving higher from its current range. And cyclical stocks such as energy and financials are breaking out to new highs.

All of these events speak to a growing risk appetite and support higher prices for risk assets.

Although, two areas where we aren't seeing such clear evidence that risk-seeking behavior is re-entering the market would be currencies and our intermarket ratios.

The AUD/JPY cross is still stuck within a range. High-yield bonds $HYG relative to their safer alternatives -- US Treasuries $IEI -- failed to hold their recent highs. And the copper/gold ratio is a hot mess.

We would expect to see decisive upside resolutions from these charts if investors are positioning for another leg higher...

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.

By adding our technical analysis...

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...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 7, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly 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.

...

We've been talking a lot about the differences between Nasdaq stocks and how other indexes are weighted.

With the Nasdaq running up into key resistance vs the S&P500, confirming a bearish momentum divergence, I think it's important to reiterate why:

Do you think the world is coming to an end if Financials are breaking out to new all-time highs?

The answer is no.

If America's most important sector is leading the way higher, then that probably speaks to more continued rotation, not massive distribution.

Sure, some sectors are getting hit.

Some sectors got hit last year too. Most of them did at some point actually.

But if you recall, when some stocks were struggling, there was always another group coming in to pick up the slack.

In this case, it's arguably the world's most important sector:

For me, less is more.

I want to be able to see what's actually going on. Not get bombarded with all sorts of lines and colors.

Price is the only thing that pays anyone. So let's focus on that.

Here's how I see it:

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 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 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.

Before we get into it, let's take a look at how our International Hall...

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

Crude oil bulls are back in town!

They kicked the year off by pushing price back above 76 and reclaiming the upper bounds of a multi-year base. Oil is the most important commodity in the world, so it’s hard to overstate just how bullish fresh seven-year highs would be. 

But we’re not quite there yet. We still need to take out the fall highs. 

The 76 level marks the former 2018 highs and the breakout from a massive reversal pattern. Buyers ran into an overwhelming amount of supply here during the back half of 2021. When they did manage to reclaim those former highs, it was short-lived, and the move quickly failed. 

But the move was more of a false start than a failed breakout. We’re back above this level again today.

Now that the bulls are back in the driver’s seat, can we expect to finally see crude oil at 100 in the coming weeks or months?

It’s very possible -- especially given one key development in recent weeks…  

Energy stocks are on fire! This is the best...