From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why we’re turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we’re curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are “stocks that pay you to make money.” Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum & relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

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

We held our September Monthly Strategy Session last night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month. 

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

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

In last week’s Currency Report, we highlighted the NZD/USD cross as a means to express our bearish US dollar thesis.

The setup was too good to resist taking a swing at following the recently failed breakdown. And so far, we’ve been rewarded for it. That’s information.

But it’s not the only cross that continues to trend well against the US Dollar. We see it all over, and it’s only reinforcing our bearish thesis.

As such, we want to look for more opportunities to take advantage of this developing theme.

In this week’s post, we’re going to do just that.

Let’s drill into our forex universe now and identify some of our favorite risk/reward setups we want to bet on to capture profits from a weakening US dollar. 

As the third quarter winds to a close, the bulls just took the lead for the first time since early in the 1st half.

Everything is clicking for them and they're in control of the game right now. While it's been a nice comeback, it's still just 52 to 48, so they have plenty of work to do.

I'm not talking about basketball. Not the Chicago bulls. I'm referring to stock market bulls and the current score on our risk checklist.

It's currently at its highest reading since we started publishing it back in June, so we'd be remiss not to write about it.

It's been a great roadmap for us in recent months so let's have a quick look at what it's saying now as well as some of the more recent developments that have taken place.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Ian Culley @ianculley

In last week’s Commodity Report we highlighted the Uranium ETF $URA and promised to dig up some trade ideas within this outperforming group of stocks.

While everyone was enjoying the Labor Day weekend, barbecuing, and watching football - we were pouring over our Uranium universe to uncover the best risk/reward opportunities in the strongest names. 

But hey, this is what we love to do!

So let’s dive right in and see what we found.

First of all, why do we like Uranium so much right now?

Both the Uranium ETF and the underlying commodity are showing leadership and breaking out of 6-year bases. That's more than good enough for us.

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 September 3, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off 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

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

Our Top 10 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.

It’s Bear Hunting Season

In our monthly candlestick review, the primary theme was the long list of all-time highs. That’s never bearish. But when we looked toward the weaker areas, despite lagging behind, they’re all holding critical levels of support. When the bears can’t drag down even the worst areas, that’s information. Precious metals, energy, or in this case, airlines whipsawed below support, only for bulls to come out and reclaim control.

As illustrated here, we got about as strong of follow-through as the bulls could have wished for. Again, the fact that so many of the weakest areas just won’t break down is incredibly constructive. If bears can’t even take out airline stocks, how can they ever grab a hold of the broader market? You have to start somewhere, and right now they’re moving backward.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s mystery chart.

We questioned whether it was a rounding top reversal pattern – in which case we’d be looking for a breakdown.

Or, if it was actually a failed breakdown - and we all know what tends to follow those patterns…

The responses we received were mixed. But there were plenty of bulls who wanted to be long against the former lows and bet on a swift reaction higher.

That’s pretty much the camp we were in too. We recently wrote about all of the whipsaw action we’ve been witnessing.

We said the next critical piece of information we’d be looking for was whether or not these patterns would see some real follow-through and confirmation.

Fast forward a week or so, and we definitely have our answer.

So let’s talk about it, and more importantly, what it means for risk assets.

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

In today’s Commodity Report, we zoomed out to our monthly charts to reconnect with the primary trend. This exercise really allows us to tune out the noise on the weekly and daily charts.

As we were reviewing our charts, there was one recurring theme that kept popping up...

Pullbacks and retests.

The CRB Index retested its breakout zone near the 2018 highs ~206. 

Crude oil broke back below a 13-year downtrend line only to reclaim it in recent sessions. 

Iron ore fell right back to check in on its 2013 highs. 

And even palladium, the one bright spot in the precious metals space, pulled back to a six-year trendline. 

But guess what? Just like we’ve recently seen in many of the weakest areas in other asset classes, buyers dug in at these key levels.  

Of all these retests, one that stood out most was Uranium. 

Let’s take a look.

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

Mixed signals have been the rule rather than the exception since the market peaked in early February.

The major stock indexes have continued to print record highs while breadth has deteriorated beneath the surface, creating several bearish divergences. 

Some stocks have gone up and some stocks have gone down. But the reality is that most stocks have gone nowhere.

The same is true for commodities.

We’ve noticed pockets of strength in base metals, livestock, and softs. But the majority of commodities have remained range-bound since the beginning of May.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge 

Last week, we pointed out that some US stocks are going up, but most are not.

The S&P 500 and the other US large-cap indexes have continued to grind to new highs all year, completely unphased by any of the deterioration in breadth beneath the surface.

But, when looking at the global stage, things are different… 

In this post, we’ll look at the current state of market breadth around the globe and discuss whether internals are supporting the new highs in many international indexes. 

It's always a worrying sign when price is making new highs at the index level with a lack of confirmation from internals. But that simply isn’t the case for ex-US equities these days. 

In fact, it’s just the opposite, as we’re seeing our breadth metrics support and confirm the recent price action on a global scale. 

Here we’re looking at the percentage of developed and emerging markets above their 50-day moving averages: