Just a few months ago in March, it took an investor 34 ounces of Gold in order to purchase 1 Bitcoin.

By last night, that number was all the way down to only 25 ounces of Gold necessary to buy 1 Bitcoin.

Here's what the ratio looks over time. In other words, here's how much "Real Gold" it costs to buy "Digital Gold":

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals bulls are taking a stand.

It’s easy to overlook following Friday’s selling pressure.

But price is respecting critical support levels for gold, platinum, palladium, and even gold’s crazy cousin.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended June 21, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

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.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual...

The U.S. Industrials sector represents one of the most important groups of stocks in the entire market.

So with new all-time highs in the S&P500 and Russell3000, then why are Industrials, who historically have the highest correlation with these indexes, not able to keep up?

Industrials are actually down over the past 3 months.

But the Aerospace & Defense stocks, that fall within the category of Industrials, continue to hit new all-time highs.

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.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Mark it, dude.

We have another bearish divergence calling strike three on the stock market rally…

High-yield bonds $HYG versus US Treasuries $IEI.

Check out the HYG/IEI ratio (dark blue line) overlaid with the S&P 500 ETF $SPY:

We use the HY bond-to-US Treasury ratio to track credit spreads. When the dark blue line falls, credit spreads widen – a sign of dwindling liquidity and stress for the bond market (the world’s largest market).

Stocks tend to struggle as credit spreads widen. 

On the flip side, when these spreads contract (or the HYG/IEI ratio catches higher) stocks rally as capital flows into risk assets. That’s why these two lines trend together. 

Notice the HYG/IEI ratio and SPY bottomed last October before rallying into the spring, following a similar path to new highs. 

But while the S&P 500 hit another all-time high this week, the HY bond-to-US Treasury ratio peaked in late April.

Plus, bullish momentum is deteriorating:

...

This chart really stood out to me this week.

We just saw the Australian Dollar vs the Japanese Yen close at the highest levels since 2007.

So why investors care about the Aussie/Yen cross?

Because look how it trades with commodities...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Cattle futures are defying gravity.

Unlike most commodities during this cycle (pick your favorite base metal or grain contract), cattle have yet to correct lower. 

Instead, they’re still hanging around new all-time highs.

Something has to give...

Check out the diamond top taking shape on the live cattle chart:

Diamond tops are a rare bearish reversal pattern. They’re so rare that I’m slow to draw their boundaries. 

But I was reassured when referencing Richard W. Schabacker’s Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits: “The real bible of technical analysis.”

He points out,

It [diamond pattern] is rarely found in perfectly symmetrical and clearly defined form: a certain amount of latitude must be taken and is permissible in drawing its boundaries.

Schabacker’s the authority, so I’ll give myself some wiggle room.

I see a broadening price action...

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:

...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

And here’s how we arrived at it…

We removed laggards which are down 5% or more relative to the ACWI Ex. U.S. Index $ACWX over...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

So much for buying the Japanese yen.

Forex markets are taking a shot at the Japanese currency as the aussie, kiwi, and Canadian dollars post fresh decade highs versus the yen.

Not to be outdone, the USD/JPY pair is printing its highest daily close since April 1990!

Check out the dollar-yen’s eight-week base breakout:

The path of least resistance now points higher toward 170, but only if the USD/JPY trades above 158.

I’ve been bearish the dollar-yen pair since it peaked in April. However, as traders, we must update our prior biases based on the current data. And it doesn’t get much more bullish than a new 34-year closing high.

Today’s USD/JPY breakout not only flips my outlook for the yen. It also impacts my view of the...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As most of you know, we use various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market...