From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

It's beginning to feel more and more like a risk-on environment out there.

Commodities are ripping higher. Stocks are digging in at critical levels. And defensive assets such as Treasury bonds and the Japanese yen are in freefall.

Despite the market volatility this year, investors continue to be rewarded for buying stocks over bonds. This has been the case for two years now, and there's no evidence it will change anytime soon.

When we look to our risk indicators and risk appetite ratios, the majority are still stuck in a range. With the stocks versus bonds ratio resolving to fresh highs, we're thinking the rest may soon follow.

But first and foremost, the price action from this classic intermarket relationship suggests that stocks are still the place to be.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a chart of the S&P 500 $SPY versus US T-Bond ETF $TLT:   

This is the video recording of our March 23, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

There are a handful of interesting Form 4 filings on today’s list.

One name that stands out is the popular meme stock GameStop $GME.

Monday night we held our March Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and re-watch here.

In this post, we’ll summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.

Let’s get right into it!

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

The unwind is on in the aussie!

After accumulating a historic net-long position last fall, commercial hedgers are scrambling to cover. Over the past four weeks, the smart money has trimmed its long exposure to roughly half of what it was.

This is reflected in our most recent Commitment of Traders Heatmap, which you can view here.

When positioning flips at extremes – like we’re seeing now in the Australian dollar – we want to look for opportunities to ride the emerging trend. In other words, we want to bet in the direction that commercial hedgers are currently unwinding away from. 

In the case of AUD, they recently had a historic net long position. As such, we’re looking for bullish technical characteristics to see if a long setup makes sense here.

It just so happens that things are really coming together for the aussie chart lately. We love when technicals and sentiment line up like this.

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

As the market takes a pause following four straight up days, options traders are using puts to fade the bounce in UP Fintech Holdings $TIGR and HP $HPQ.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 18, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

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

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

A Reversal In Risk

Not only are the most battered areas of the market digging in at logical levels of support and resolving higher, so is high-yield debt relative to Treasuries (HYG/IEI). This crucial ratio is an inverse illustration of credit spreads as we’re comparing the bond prices instead of the yields. HYG/IEI putting in a potential failed breakdown and resolving higher speaks to a reprieve in market stress and bodes well for risk assets. It’s no coincidence that we’re seeing similar action at the index level as the S&P 500 is back above its January lows. Bulls want to see this ratio catch higher in the coming weeks as this would support a tradable low and fresh rally for stocks as risk-seeking behavior re-enters the market. There is still some work to do, but we’re moving in the right direction.

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 big picture context 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.

The highlight of today’s list is the Altimeter Capital Form 4, which revealed a $7 million purchase in the mid-cap software stock Confluent $CFLT.

Altimeter now owns 5,131,700 shares of CFLT.

There was also a significant Form 4 filing by Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha, detailing a purchase in the diagnostics and research company Natera $NTRA.

Botha purchased roughly $5 million of NTRA stock, bringing his total share count to over 1.3 million.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley 

Gold looks like it’s ready to run.

The largest gold miner in the world, Newmont Mining Corp. $NEM, has broken out of a multi-year base.

Silver and platinum have dug in at critical support levels and are catching higher.

And, most importantly, gold is in the process of reclaiming its former all-time highs from summer 2020.

These are all bullish developments, suggesting gold -- and precious metals more broadly -- are ready to join in on the party that most commodities have been enjoying for more than a year.

Last month, gold broke above its former 2011 highs near 1,924. Here’s a zoomed-out view of the chart: