The joke around our virtual office this morning was that the nasdaq is not just strong as an index, the stock itself really stands out!

The exchanges and "marketplaces" are really shining. The relative strength compared to many other sectors and industry groups is off the charts (see what I did there?)

Take a look at names like CME Group, Market Access and Tradeweb. These names keep popping up on our relative strength scans, especially compared to other types of "financials". But let's be serious, these are tech stocks.

This is the chart of the Nasdaq that has our attention:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone for participating in this week’s Mystery Chart. The responses were pretty mixed with most wanting to do nothing for now and wait for a retest of the recent highs or lows before taking action.

While it's hard not to like this uptrend over the long-term, doing nothing in the near-term is more or less the camp we're in as well.

With that as our backdrop let's discuss why this chart is important and on our radar right now.

This is a daily line chart of the All Star Charts Custom MAGA Index, which is an equally weighted index of the four largest stocks in the US Equity Market, measured by market capitalization.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Today, we put out a post outlining why we are bearish on Small-Cap stocks and want to be shorting the Russell 2000 ETF (IWM). Read it here as it sets the stage for this post.

Small-caps are the weakest area of US Equities. That's why we are expressing our bearish view on stocks via the Russell 2000 as opposed to one of the large-cap indexes, all of which the Russell has severely underperformed for several years now.

In line with our top-down approach, we don't just want to short an index. We are believers that playing the averages results in average returns.

For this reason, we've drilled into the Russell 2000, looked at every single chart and picked out the weakest names we could find with clearly defined risk management levels to limit us to the smallest of losses in the case these names mean-revert higher.

Adam Koos is a portfolio manager who uses Technical Analysis to make decisions for the clients he advises. In times like these, Financial Advisors all over the world are getting asked the hard questions. In this episode, Adam talks about how Technical Analysis has helped both his decision making and the communication with the families he works for. It's really cool to see these tools helping advisors everywhere, and especially a friend who I speak to regularly about markets and other common interests, like sports and wine.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In January and February, we cautioned that we wanted to be selling stocks, raising cash and buying bonds due to bearish divergences and deteriorating market internals. At the same time, many major indexes and sectors had achieved our upside objectives and were at logical levels of potential resistance.

The Global Equity Market collapsed and the S&P 500 fell 35% soon after, blowing a hole in the long-term uptrend in most major indexes around the world.

In late March we wrote about bullish breadth divergences and the key levels of interest that made us want to err on the long-side over the near-term.

That ended up being the tradeable low we were looking for as stocks gained 30% and retraced more than half of their recent drawdown in just 15 days.

On our monthly conference call this week, we talked a lot about key levels in the most important asset classes in the world.

As promised, here's a run down of the 20 items on our checklist. I promise you the world is not ending if there are an overwhelming amount of yeses on this list.

Let's use this as a risk management gauge. I think this will help us answer the question of, How defensive should we be?

We made a spreadsheet internally for this and we'll send you regular updates and keep discussing this list as new data comes in.

In yesterday's Chart Summit, we spoke a lot about the relative strength in the Nifty Pharma sector. (You can watch the full videos of all the presenters for free.)

We got a lot of follow-up questions about a specific stock, Glenmark Pharma, so let's take a look and assess its absolute and relative trends.

In yesterday's Chart Summit, we presented our view on the major asset classes around the globe and noted what we need to see before getting bullish Equities again. (You can watch the full videos of all the presenters for free.)

Unfortunately, current conditions suggest continued volatility so we're looking for short setups to take advantage of it in the coming days/weeks.

Let's take a look at our broader thesis and what stocks and indexes we're shorting to express it in the market.

Since late March we've been watching to see how the counter-trend rally in stocks would develop...and while a few stocks under the surface continue to rally, the Nifty 50 remains stuck below its 2015-2016 highs and most stocks remain in downtrends.

Did you notice how shares of Advanced Micro Devices are trying to finally break out of this 20-year base?

This is a long-term candlestick chart I brought up on our Monthly Conference Call last night.  I used a line chart just to show how clean it is.

The "Multi-decade breakout" thesis is only valid if we're above those 2000 highs. If not, then by definition, it's not a breakout.

That level for me is $44:

A question we're getting a lot these days is when the market ultimately does bottom, do we want to be buying the stocks that have been hit the most or the ones that have held up the best during the market's fall?

As with most things in markets and in life, the answer is it depends. In this post, we'll explain why.

We're all stuck at home these days and Zoom is how we get to hang out with friends and family.

This week I was chatting with my pal Jeremy over in Laguna Beach about Gold, Silver and Gold Mining Stocks.

I think there are some good opportunities in the space and I think there are areas in which to be patient.

Here's a short video of our discussion:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Every weekend we publish simple performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with brief commentary on each.

As this is something we do internally on a daily basis, we believe sharing it with clients will add value and help them better understand our top-down approach. We use these tables to provide insight into both relative strength and market internals.

This week we want to highlight our US Equity Index and Factor tables, as they are both showing near-term reversions in some of the most robust long-term intermarket trends.

Click on table to enlarge view.