From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The most speculative areas of the market peaked in Q1 of 2021 and have been under pressure ever since. It’s not just IPOs and SPACs. Areas like biotech, social media, and online retail have completely fallen out of favor too.

Many of the stocks that have been selling off were among the top performers off the COVID lows in 2020. Some of these former leaders are in 60% to 70% drawdowns today.

What a difference a year can make!

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to the first rate hike, the prevailing opinion seems to be that these stocks will remain under pressure. As things currently stand, there's not much on the charts to suggest they're ready to turn things around.

On the other hand, some of these industry groups are already more than 30% off of their highs -- and that’s at the index level. Eventually, further downside would be inconsistent with the idea that stocks are in a bull market.

For the health of the overall market, we want to see these stocks stop selling off so aggressively. Despite the volatility this week, there are some signs that this is happening.

Let...

We trust the bond market around here.

I don't have a lot of faith in people, or media or economists. But bonds are something we certainly take seriously.

There's no bullshit with them.

The biggest players in the world have no choice but to be intimately involved in fixed income markets. So if you're curious which way the pendulum is swinging, you'll be able to see it in bonds.

Here's a quick look at US Interest Rates making new highs - from the 1yr to 10yr yields these are going towards the upper right:

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.

US Stock Market Indexes can be a funny thing. As investors we need to understand what's inside of them. Which stocks and sectors drive them higher or lower?

This seems like an afterthought in some circles, especially after the major large-cap indexes have put up nice returns the past 3 years. The S&P500, for example, was up 28%, 16% and 27% respectively in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

But at the individual stock level, it certainly didn't feel that way in many cases.

I have a good feeling 2022 will be the opposite. I think this year, the average and median stock has a higher likelihood to outperform the major indexes, for one simple reason.

No one owns a lot of these names.

We're buying an $MU June 100/125 Bull Call Spread for an approximately $6.50 debit. This means we’re long the 100 calls and short an equal amount of 125 calls

Check out our short video with the thought process behind these trades:

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

Downside pressure on long-duration rates and a flattening yield curve was the story of the bond market for the latter part of 2021. 

But we started to see signs that downside risks were easing in the final weeks of December. The 10- and 30-year yields made a nice kick save after undercutting their summer lows, and high yield bonds $HYG began to outperform safer alternatives like the Treasury bond ETF $IEI.

It seemed like the bond market was heading in the right direction – except for Treasury spreads. The 2s/10s spread was the missing piece of the puzzle, continuing to push toward new 52-week lows… 

Until now!

Only a couple of trading sessions into the new year, the bond market is providing plenty of fireworks. Rates are jumping higher across the curve, and critical treasury spreads such as 2s/10s, are following higher: 

...

If this blog post was served up to you when you were searching for the latest scare porn on the omicron covid pandemic, I'm sorry to disappoint. But if you'd like to draw a correlation between the rising omicron cases and rising share prices of Micron technology stock --- you wouldn't be the first person to commit a #ChartCrime in service of a good story.

Micron Technology $MU is a stock that's been on my radar since the team published the Under the Hood report around Christmas highlighting the setup.

Here's what they had to say:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our January Monthly Strategy Session Monday night. Premium Members can access and re-watch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

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

The rally in the US Dollar Index $DXY is stalling out.

With each passing day, dollar internals are weakening, and the prospect of a bullish resolution from the current continuation pattern in DXY is diminishing. We expect these patterns to resolve quickly. And when they don’t, that’s information.

Some other things worth noting are that commercial hedgers hold a large short position in DXY futures and the near-term bearish trend for individual dollar crosses is expanding (up 20% from last week to a staggering 80%).

The bottom line is evidence continues to stack against the USD.

With that as our backdrop, let’s check in on a long USD trade that was triggered in November and outline how we want to navigate the coming days and weeks.

Toward the end of the year, we covered a couple of key levels that the dollar needed to clear to increase our conviction in its current...

Until now, the answer to the Growth vs Value question has depended on what type of market cap conversation you're having.

Through the end of 2021 Large-cap Growth was still a leader. It was the Small-cap Growth stocks that had been crushed most of the year, particularly when compared to the performance of Small-cap Value.

You can see the new 52-week lows in IWO / IWN coming into 2022:

This is the video recording of our January 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We’ve already had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it 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 about a year now, we’ve focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B. That was fun, but it’s time we branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

The way we’re doing 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...