This week we’re looking for a long setup in the Consumer Goods Sector. FMCG is a defensive sector and tends to outperform the market in a broadly weak environment.

Let's take a look at this name.

We analyze a lot of data here at Allstarcharts.

Stocks in the U.S. and around the world, Interest Rates both domestic and global, Commodities, Currencies and an infinite amount of Intermarket Relationships that help us identify trends across assets.

Price is what pays. Not just around here, but also for you reading this, as well as every other investor on the planet.

Nothing else is going to pay you.

So when it comes to "What is the best Technical Indicator?"

The answer is Price.

Now, in order to supplement our price analysis, we include things like Momentum and Breadth studies, Relative Strength, Sentiment, Seasonality, Volatility and a bunch of new tools and strategies that we continue to develop as markets evolve over time.

Sentiment can be a tricky one.

I think anyone who has been in markets for a while would agree.

The short answer is that there is NO single sentiment indicator that will tell you when to buy or sell stocks, or any other asset class for that matter.

Where Sentiment really stands out to me is when it is at a historic extreme, which by definition, is not very often.

The buyers stepped up when they had to.

This could have been disaster for the Stock Market, but instead it's just more of the same: A Hot Hot Mess.

I think a great way to explain what happened this week is with the Equally-weighted S&P500. Remember, this version of the index is not heavily weighted towards those monster companies.

This index gives an equal weighting to each of the components:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we’ve been working on internally is using various bottoms-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 stocks are going up in value.

Most stocks are not.

If there's been one theme that we keep seeing for most of the year, it's that.

Sure, some stocks are doing well. Most stocks aren't, as we discussed here.

You can really see it in the Nasdaq Advance-Decline line, as it sits at new 8-month lows:

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 bottoms-up scan, "Under The Hood."

To make the cut for our Minor Leagues list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters. Then, we simply sort by proximity to new highs in order to focus on the best players.

The goal is to catch the strongest names while they’re small and still have serious upside potential. If any of these stocks ever climbs the ranks to the big leagues, the returns could be huge. We’re looking at 5-10x moves just to break into large-cap land!

Let’s dive into this week’s report and see what’s happening in some of the hottest stocks in the Minor Leagues.

This week we're looking at a long idea in the IT space.

Let's take a look at this name.

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.

We came into last week wondering if we'd get follow through from Bank stocks.

I think we can all agree that we did. And not just in the U.S. but around the world.

Here are Regional Banks above those key 2018 highs:

There are few things as bullish as Regional Bank stocks acting well.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

In today's post, we’ll discuss some of our favorite and most important intermarket ratios and see what they’re suggesting for markets and risk appetite around the globe.

One thing we found interesting when digging through these charts is that many of them look a lot like stocks do right now. 

Sideways. Range-bound. Messy. But, within the context of underlying uptrends.

So these are basically just continuation patterns on shorter timeframes.

But, after consolidating for months and even quarters now, we are beginning to see some resolve higher… kind of like we’re seeing from stocks on an absolute basis.

Coincidence? Probably not.

We think this makes a lot of sense and bodes well for risk assets. Let’s take a look at some of these charts now.

Here’s one of the most important cross-asset ratios we track, and it’s a great example of exactly what we’re talking about. 

This is the stocks-versus-bonds ratio $SPY/$TLT:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Financials have made quite the comeback in recent weeks, with the Large-Cap Financial SPDR $XLF trading back to record highs as bank stocks around the world have fought to repair some of the damage endured during Q2.

We even saw regional banks break back above a major level of interest last week. The importance of this can't be overstated.

But that's just the US. What are financials doing in the rest of the world? Are they confirming this strength we're seeing from the US?

In this post, we’ll provide an in-depth rundown of what’s going on with this critically important sector--not just in the US, but around the globe.

Let’s kick things off with last week’s mystery chart. As always, thanks to everyone who participated.

We asked whether the recent highs were a false start or a failed breakout. The answers were skewed in favor of the bulls, as most of you said it was merely a retest of the previous highs. And it looks like you were right!

Here it is... the S&P Global Financials Index $IXG:

Do you have any exposure to Energy?

Then this is the chart for you!

It's Crude Oil stuck between 76 and 66: