In bear markets, you're going to find more stocks making new lows than new highs.

That's just basic math.

In bull markets, you'll see the opposite.

Here's what today looks like: 33 consecutive weeks of more stocks hitting new lows than new highs.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood report, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended July 8, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated our Minor Leaguers report.

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.

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.

The market has work to do.

We've been in a Bear Market since February of 2021 when stocks peaked. Since then it's been a slow deterioration ultimately hitting almost every sector, with some areas just getting absolutely destroyed.

But just to keep it simple, the bottom line is we're below overhead supply in almost every case. There are exceptions, but I think the S&P500 shows what's really going on for the average and median stock or sector.

This is a top, and price is below former support:

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.

The engagement between Elon Musk and Twitter $TWTR is not going to end easily or quietly.

The mercurial entrepreneur tweeted a provocative meme early this morning, depicting himself as a big-brained genius for using legal mechanisms to force accurate bot data out of the Twitter board.

You hear people talk about Dow Theory all the time don't you?

What you might not know is that there's a lot more to Dow Theory than you think.

In fact, that whole DJ Industrials & Transports confirming or diverging from one another is not even in my top 5 most important Dow Theory Tenets.

You can read about what's actually important about Dow Theory here. Give it a read and then let me know what you think.

Today, if you don't mind, I'd rather focus on Dow Reality.

I see two very similar scenarios here between the DJ Industrial Average and the DJ Transportation Average.

Let's start with Papa Dow: The Industrials.

When you look at as many charts as I do, you quickly start to notice when certain charts just don't look like most of the others.

Healthcare is one of those.

We discussed it all on this week's Live Conference Call. Premium Members click here to watch and download the slides.

And if you're not a Premium Member yet, just give us a call and we'll set you up: (323) 421-7910

The Healthcare conversation we're having is a really important one. Notice how with S&Ps, Nasdaq and other major indexes breaking down and completing tops, Healthcare has just traded sideways.

We call this, "Relative Strength":

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:

There’s been a lot of buzz about the dwindling likelihood of a Twitter $TWTR-Elon Musk tie-up this week.

As Musk’s team has reportedly cut off deal discussions around funding, the talking heads are telling us what price has been suggesting for months now: It’s not happening.

We're going on 32 consecutive weeks of more stocks making new lows than new highs.

In bull markets you see the opposite.

Gold has not been in an uptrend in almost 2 years. I think one day it eventually breaks out. But what's the rush?

Let it break out!

I discussed all of this and more with Charles Payne on Fox Business yesterday.

Here's the full clip:

We were just talking about how we liked the strength from Baker Bros. Advisors’ largest holding, Seagen $SGEN, during yesterday’s weekly in-house analysts’ call.

This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that Merck & Co. $MRK is in advanced discussions to acquire the cancer biotech for $40 billion.