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.

Macro Universe:

• Our Macro universe turned things around this week as 81% of our list closed higher this week with a median return of 0.94%
• Procyclical Commodities led the bounce as Copper and Crude Oil were the week’s biggest winners up 4.39% and 4.31%, respectively 
• New highs have increased over last week’s dismal performance
• And 74% of the assets on our list are within...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

This is one of our favorite bottoms-up scans: Follow The Flow. In this note, what we do is simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity - either bullish or bearish... but NOT both.

What we mean by this is that we have options experts, both internally and through our partnerships with TheTradeXchange, whereby we do all the digging through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients, in order to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We weed out all the noise for you in terms of hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades. What this leaves us with is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind... and they're doing so for one reason only: Because they think the stock is about to move in their...

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

Here we are on Friday, and it's been yet another eventful week for the commodity complex.

Steel futures ripped higher. Corn was limit-up on Thursday. Lumber continues to digest its gains with the same volatile fashion it made them in, giving back another 10% on the week.

And then of course there's Dr. Copper which appears to have successfully defended former resistance turned support at its all-time highs from 2011. It's impossible to overstate the importance of how this massive base in Copper resolves.

Bulls definitely don't want this move to evolve into a failed breakout... The 4.50-4.60 zone is the line in the sand. 

As for Energy Markets... Crude Oil making its highest daily close since October 2018 might be the biggest development of all.

We’ve talked a lot about Crude...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Earlier in the week, we held our May Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting 5 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

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

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?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

Something we’ve been working on internally this year is using various bottoms-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. One way we’re doing this is by identifying 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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, and Salesforce, to a myriad of others… all would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table you will notice we...

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

We’ve recently pointed out the possible double tops in the Dollar index and the USD/CAD, along with our overall outlook for further weakness from king dollar.

But can we find other areas of the market that could provide further insight into the US Dollar’s direction?

After all, many market participants are fixated on the direction of the US Dollar right now as it approaches its key mutlti-year lows.

Why does the Dollar matter so much to investors?

Firs of all, USD and risk assets have had a very strong negative correlation over the last several years. The USD Index bottomed in early 2018 as stock markets around the world peaked. Conversely, the dollar topped during the Covid sell-off when stocks bottomed out at their March 2020 lows.

To gain a clearer picture of the USD, we need to go beyond the Dollar Index and developed currencies.

Let’s look at a couple of charts of emerging currencies as they provide valuable information on broad USD performance, as well as...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We've already had some great trades come out of this Small-Cap focused column since we launched it late last year and began rotating it with our flagship bottoms-up scan, "Under The Hood."

To make the cut for our Minor Leagues list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. After applying price and liquidity filters, we simply sort by proximity to new highs in order to focus on the best players.

The goal is to catch the strongest names while they're small and still have serious upside potential. If any of these stocks ever climb the ranks to the big leagues, the returns could be huge. We're looking at 5-10x moves just to break into large-cap land!

And what better time than now to launch a small-cap-focused column? We've seen robust...

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.

Macro Universe:

• Our Macro Universe continued its weakness this week as over 60% of our list closed lower with a median return of -0.18%.
• Procyclical Commodities were the weakest this week.
• Copper was down 3.73% remains in a bullish regime.
• Lumber was the hardest hit again this week, dropping over 7.22%.
•  The biggest winner of the week was the Volatility index again gaining over 7%
•  New highs have...

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.

European equities are in the process of staging a reversal relative to global equities after forming a formidable base. If this ratio of the FTSE Europe ETF can decisively move above this downward sloping 7-year trendline, this would confirm the beginning phases of a new structural uptrend for a region that has acted as a perennial laggard in a Growth dominated environment.

Now that we’re finally witnessing rotation into Value areas like Financials and Natural Resources, Europe no longer is being anchored down by its constituents. That exposure is swiftly becoming a powerful tailwind.

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

Gold has been one of the last places we have wanted to put our money over the past eight months, second only to Bonds.

Other areas of the commodities space, like Base Metals, Energy, and Ags, along with risk assets in general have experienced an explosive rally. While Precious Metals have gone nowhere. But are we starting to see signs that this could be changing?

Last week we pointed out that Lumber had reached our target and could be due for a pullback. And we’re seeing that play out.

The previous week we noted that other procyclical commodities within the Base Metals group were also reaching our targets and testing areas of potential resistance. And like Lumber and so many other risk-assets, they remain trapped below key levels of overhead supply.

So while much of these former leaders appear to...

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

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

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?