From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
The bull market for commodities is alive and well. They were the top-performing asset class last year, and they’re kicking off the new year with a lead once again.
The energy-heavy CRB Index is printing new seven-year highs, and our ASC Equal-Weight Commodity Index just resolved from a nine-month base to its highest level since 2013.
To take advantage of this area of leadership, we’ve been highlighting strength and outlining long ideas in a variety of commodity markets.
We know not everyone has access to the futures markets, and that’s OK, because there are plenty of opportunities to express a bullish thesis on commodities through the equity market.
To make this easier, we’ve put together a universe of stocks that offer investors exposure to a wide array of different commodities.
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.
Tuesday night we held our January Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
There have been some fireworks to kick off the new year. One of the biggest developments in 2022 has to be the US 10-year yield breaking to its highest level in two years.
The direction in which yields resolve from their 2021 consolidation will impact all the major asset classes, including bonds, stocks, and commodities. We’re already seeing procyclical assets catch an aggressive bid as the 10-year flirts with an upside resolution.
For now, the path of least resistance is higher. But we still need to see follow-through and confirmation before we can be comfortable that these new highs are here to stay.
When we look at the international bond market, it’s not just domestic Treasury yields that are on the rise. We’re actually seeing rates make new highs all across the developed world.
As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-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.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
One of the most important themes these days is the rotation between growth and value stocks. Groups like energy and financials have been breaking to new highs while growth and tech indexes have come under serious pressure.
So far, 2022 has been a true tale of two markets.
While cyclicals and value stocks appear to be gearing up for a momentous year, it looks like the party is finally coming to an end for the growth trade.
We want to lean on the value-heavy leadership groups for long opportunities in 2022. As for growth, we think it's likely to remain messy as interest rates continue to rise.
When we look beneath the surface at growth and value stocks right now, our breadth data is confirming the action we’re seeing at the sector level.
Let’s dive in and discuss...
Here's one way to visualize the opposing paths of large-cap value and large-cap growth right now. This indicator shows us the percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving averages for each of these indexes:
After weeks of failing to hold breakouts on an individual currency basis, the tight coil in the DXY finally resolved lower.
The brief reprieve in USD strength was immediately felt across markets last week, with cyclical/value stocks and procyclical commodities catching an aggressive bid.
Now that the headwinds associated with dollar strength appear to be easing, will risk assets enjoy a tailwind in the form of sustained USD weakness?
Or was this just the latest fake-out from the DXY?
Let’s take a look at a couple of charts and highlight the levels we're watching in the coming weeks and months.
What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.
This chart can be of any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes it’s an absolute price chart, other times it’s on a relative basis.
It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!
The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.
While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…
So, let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?
We’ve already had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.
We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…
For about a year now, we’ve focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B. That was fun, but it’s time we branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.
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.
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.
