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

Copper was a critical piece missing from the intermarket puzzle heading into the fourth quarter.

Just last week, copper was testing year-to-date lows and looking vulnerable for a downside break. Meanwhile, energy futures and interest rates were rising, and cyclical and value stocks were getting back in gear.

The mixed signals were impossible to ignore. It’s not likely that the recent breakouts in crude oil and the US 10-year yield would hold in an environment where copper is breaking down.

Dr. Copper is a great leading economic indicator and critical to the global growth narrative. Let’s see what it’s saying.

Here are two ways we were looking at the copper chart:

Those angry little gold buggers are finally starting to put some points on the board.

The lack of participation in Gold since last Spring has been something to witness. Every commodity on earth has skyrocketed, except for gold and other precious metals.

My argument is that maybe it's behaved that way because it's not a commodity. Maybe it's more of a currency, something I've always argued.

Right or wrong, call it whatever you want, it has done poorly since last summer of 2020.

And with the Dollar as strong as it's been, Gold has really taken a beating.

But not lately....

Can we call it a comeback?

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I'm going to be sharing you some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

Here's the thing about options trading: you can make it as complicated as your heart's content. And there are plenty of incredibly smart practitioners out there who run amazingly complex strategies involving all kinds of volatility and statistical arbitrage.

They analyze 3D volatility surface graphs, use lesser understood greeks, and interpret things like "volatility smile" and dispersion.

If that works for you, great! I always say: if it works, do more of it!

But another beautiful thing about options trading is that there are many different ways to pull profits out of the market, and most of them aren't as complicated as they may sound -- even if the strategies have exotic sounding names like "iron condor" or "broken-wing butterfly."

And my absolute favorite options strategy isn't even really a strategy at all -- it's simply buying long calls when I'm bullish!

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

We’re beginning to see signs that risk-on behavior is re-entering the market.

Commodities are ripping in the face of a rising dollar.

Cyclical stocks are back in gear as the S&P 500 High Beta ETF $SPHB posts higher highs and higher lows relative to its low-volatility alternative $SPLV.

Meanwhile, classic risk-appetite barometer AUD/JPY sliced through a critical level of former support-turned-resistance earlier this week.

All of these point to an increasing risk-on environment. 

But what does the bond market have to say about investor positioning toward risk?

Let’s look at a couple credit spreads that speak to investors’ willingness to incur risk.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

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 & relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Crude oil is at its highest level since 2014 after it took out resistance around 76. 

Energy stocks just ripped off of support and are back above a key level of resistance, trading at highs not seen since early 2020.

Economically sensitive commodities and cyclical stocks, in general, remain very well bid. 

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is hung up on narratives surrounding stagflation and the possibility of a global recession. But we’re just not seeing this at all when we look at price. 

Risk assets are performing as well as they have all year. And, when we look outside the US, while there’s definitely been selling pressure around the world, the areas that stick out all seem to have something in common.

The energy-dependent countries are showing leadership. 

This supports the recent price action from energy futures and stocks, many of which have been ripping to fresh highs.

In today’s post, we'll take a look at some international equities we can use to express a bullish thesis on higher oil prices -- and higher prices for risk assets more broadly.

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

All eyes have been on the US dollar as it presses to new 52-week highs.

But its recent rally hasn’t been accompanied by the usual risk-off behavior we’d expect. Actually, it’s been quite the opposite.

Bonds have been rolling over, commodities and cyclical stocks continue to march higher, and the yen can’t catch a bid.

To us, the evidence suggests the USD is momentarily decoupling from its classic intermarket relationships as it grinds higher in the face of all this.

If the US dollar is out of sync with the action in other asset classes, where can we look within the currencies market for a clear perspective of investors’ attitudes toward risk?

That’s right... the yen!

Let’s look at a couple of charts highlighting the Japanese yen’s weakness and discuss what it means for the current market environment.

First up is the classic risk-appetite barometer, the AUD/JPY cross:

This is our ASC Research Q4 2021 Playbook.

With the current market environment giving us many mixed messages, what better time to dive in and see what's happening underneath the surface?

• Stocks (International & U.S.)
• U.S. Sectors & Industries
• Market Breadth & Sentiment
• Commodities
• Currencies
• Intermarket Analysis
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• New Trade Ideas
• Overall Strategy

A big concern for stocks this summer was that there weren't any bears left.

Most of the silly permabears had given up and moved on to torture investors in other asset classes like Bitcoin or Gold.

Sentiment this summer was a headwind.

And now it's the opposite. Sentiment is a tailwind for stocks.

Take a look at the sentiment from Financial Advisors and Individual investors. Just a few months back, we saw the most amount of bulls since January 2018, just before stocks all over the world plummeted.

All it took was half the nasdaq stocks dropping 20% for sentiment to mean revert. Take a look at this chart showing that we're down to levels where bulls historically start showing up, and that's usually because of an increase in stock prices:

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 stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny.

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 late last year 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 we think 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…