The DeFi Revolution is upon us, at least according to Jim Bianco. For many years, I've looked up to Jim and the work he's been doing at Bianco Research and, in fact, he's the one who first inspired me to rip through hundreds of charts during my live presentations in order to get my points across. It took me about a decade to realize it, but it was him who I got that from.

Fast forward to 2021, and the Macro Technician who I've always admired has turned into one of the leading voices of what's taking place in DeFi, or "Decentralized Finance". Who better to talk to about what's going on than Jim himself? Ethereum, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Yield Farming, Metamask Wallets, Coinbase....the whole thing.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When running through some scans this morning two new stocks came on our radar from our Under The Hood universe. 

You can read our most recent report here. It was just published Monday.

Today, we're going to discuss an Industrial conglomerate and well-known household name, as well as one of the largest Natural Gas companies in the world.

Not only are these stocks in some of our favorite sectors right now, but both are currently flirting with reclaiming key former highs. They also offer clearly defined risk levels to trade against, in addition to profit profiles skewed heavily in favor of the bulls.

We'd be remiss not to share these setups with you, so let’s dive right in and look at them…

Chop Chop Chop....Classic Year 2 Behavior for stocks continues.

Meanwhile, Crude Oil keeps on pressing up against these former highs. A breakout through 66 looks imminent.

This week we dropped a brand new 2-to-100 Club Report. Which names stood out from this week's scan?

And what about Fried Chicken? Which wine do we pair with that??

All this and more on the latest episode of Bearish or Bullish. Enjoy!

We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. This time around, we have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to generate great returns.

While we go through our lists of sectors and stocks on a weekly basis, we thought of launching a product that would highlight the names that are the strongest performers in our universe and those that are primed for an explosive move.

Just like The Outperformers scan, this is a list of stocks belonging to the sectors that display relative strength in the market at any given point in time. Since sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market, we will be ahead of the curve before the gears keep shifting.

A funny thing happened last week.

Copper prices closed the month at the exact price where it closed in February of 2011, right before it proceeded to get cut in half.

If Base Metals were to correct, wouldn't this be a logical place for it to occur?

It sure feels like a long time ago now, but it's been less than a decade since the European Union underwent a rather serious sovereign debt crisis.

This set off a roughly two year bear market for International Stocks as well as a rangebound mess for US stocks.

After this bout of volatility, most risk-assets carved out significant lows in 2016 and rallied higher until global risk peaked in 2018. Then it all fell apart again last year.

This brings us to today, where we're now seeing European countries and indexes trade right back up to their 2018 or pre-COVID highs left and right.

While diversified global indexes like MSCI EAFE $EFA and MSCI Europe $VGK recently reclaimed their former highs from 2014, 2018, and are already well above their pre-COVID peaks - they are now approaching a far more important area of overhead resistance at their pre-financial crisis highs.

This is the video recording of our May 3, 2021 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood” column for the week ended April 30, 2021. This column is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off with our Minor Leaguers column.

In this column, we 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.

This week we're looking at a long setup in the Metal sector. There are a handful of sectors that are outperforming the market as Nifty 50 continues to move sideways, and Metal has been a consistent name there.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the context of the big picture and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

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

One major theme that we’re watching closely right now are the growing number of risk assets at or near critical levels or key former highs.

We continue to see a variety of world stock market indexes approach crucial inflection points. As the list keeps getting longer, our cautionary view of the potential for further choppiness in many markets gets stronger.  

Where prices resolve from here in major indexes like the MSCI Emerging Markets, EAFE -- and even some major domestic indexes such as the Russell 2000, are about to provide us with some big-time information into the health of global equities and risk-assets in general.

Today, we’re going to look at one of these diversified international indexes that finds itself in this same boat as it approaches its pre-financial crisis record highs.  

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We've covered the Growth vs Value relationship ad nauseam since late last year.

We continue to believe that a structural trend reversal in favor of Value is underway.

We laid out our thesis and the key level we're watching to potentially prove it wrong... That is and has been 1.70 in the Russell Large Cap Growth vs Value ratio.