From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts and Steve Strazza @sstrazza

The Crypto space just experienced its worst day since the height of the Covid crash.

Bitcoin was down over 30% on an intraday basis, while Ethereum was almost cut in half.

We see this recent action aligning Crypto with what's taking place throughout the market. Bulls have had a more challenging time in recent months, and risk assets are coming under increasing pressure. 

Speaking to this topic, here's what we outlined in a note earlier this week:

One more chart that I think is interesting is the Bitcoin / Gold ratio hitting it’s upside objective and reversing hard.

How many people are telling you to sell Bitcoin to buy Gold?

I don’t hear any at all….

If we’re below 36:1 in the ratio between Bitcoin and Gold, then we prefer Gold.

Of course, we had no idea a 30%...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

As the market has become increasingly mixed, it's time to switch up our strategy a bit.

As we outlined in our post yesterday, for the first time in about a year, we are shorting stocks.

But this statement requires an asterisk...

We are shorting some stocks. And at the same time, we're still buying the leaders as plenty of stocks continue to show impressive strength -- particularly those with cyclical or value characteristics. That's where we're focusing for long ideas.

As for shorts, it's all growth. That is where the weakness is. We're not only seeing deterioration and relative weakness at the index level for growth stocks -- the internals are also deteriorating beneath the surface.

This is simply a tale of two markets. As growth-heavy averages like the Nasdaq roll over, the leadership areas are registering bullish breadth thrusts and carrying on higher like business as usual.

Does one of these groups eventually catch up or ...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

First of all, thanks to everyone as always for participating in this week's Mystery Chart.

As noted in the Mystery post last week, the rounding bottom in question is a pattern we've become all too familiar with since last year.

The reason for this is simple: The chart was merely a derivative - or just another way to illustrate and visualize the overarching theme that's driving so many of our cross-asset relationships these days... The sustained rotation out of Growth  and into Value.

We've written a lot about this theme since last year, and more recently have been pounding the table on a new theme that's taken the forefront for markets across the globe... We believe we're in for a trendless or rangebound period for risk assets as well as an increasingly bifurcated or mixed market. 

Much of this divergence in performance among various groups can be directly attributed to this trend toward value and away from growth.

Not only are we seeing...

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

One of the most frustrating questions plaguing investors at the moment is... "How long will this choppy environment last?"

And one question we’re asking internally is… “What is with all these mixed signals!?”

Once the latter clears itself up, we'll have our answer to the former... But not until then.

When the outlook becomes increasingly murky, the best action is to take a step back, let the smoke clear, and weigh each new piece of evidence as it becomes available.

For now, the most important evidence we have is our list of risk-on commodities and equity indexes testing critical levels of interest grows larger by the day.

There seems to be no end in sight. Complicating matters further, we’re actually seeing this kind of price action throughout the risk asset landscape. It's not isolated to a single asset class or region. We're seeing it in Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, and even Currency Markets... and not just in the US, but also abroad.

There are ...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood” column for the week ended May 14, 2021. This column is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off with our Minor Leaguers column.

In this column, we 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.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers… there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we’re...

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.

A few weeks ago, we put out what you could call a “lower conviction” trade idea in Gold Miners. The reason we did this was simple and boiled down to two things: 1. The risk/reward profile; and 2. The primary trend. The prior was simply too good to ignore as price tested a formidable level of former resistance turned support. And this was taking place within the context of an underlying uptrend. Fast forward to today, and that trade has worked out beautifully (see lower pane).

What’s interesting is that Treasury Bonds are now setting up with a very similar chart formation after grinding steadily back down toward the 2016 and 2019 highs, where prices are now. The question that remains is whether buyers dig in and defend this key former resistance level near 113. They have so far… And just like GDX, the risk/reward here is too good to pass up and...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

You can consider this our weekly state of the union address as we break down and reiterate both our tactical and structural outlook on various asset classes as well as discuss the most important themes and developments taking place in markets all around the world.

While the weight of the evidence remains in the bull's favor, we continue to see more data arrive that suggests the environment could be shifting toward one that is less conducive to risk assets, at least over shorter timeframes.

In fact, we'd argue that bears have more talking points today than they've had at any time over the trailing year. With each passing week, data continues to suggest a more cautionary approach is appropriate...

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. We can then put these near-term developments into the context of the big picture and glean insights into 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.

• Procyclical Commodities gave back some of their recent gains this week.
  • Copper was down over 2.34%. However, the primary trend remains intact with momentum in a bullish regime.
  • Lumber was the hardest hit this week, dropping over 7% reversing its extreme momentum reading from last week to 64 this week.
• New short-term lows across the board in many US equity indexes, from the S&P to Dow Utilities, and even SMIDs...

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

Lumber futures have been on an absolute tear since last spring. The vertical but volatile price action off last year's lows is something for the history books.

After trading down to 250 in late March of 2020, Lumber has since shot back above 1,600, where it trades today. It’s no wonder social media is full of people flaunting their wealth with stacks of timber. 

But we have to ask... is it time for a pullback? Is this rally overdone here? 

Let’s take a deeper look and discuss why we believe the logical move for Lumber over the short term is sideways... or even lower.

Here’s the chart. Look at that face ripper - up nearly 7x in just over a year!

Lumber futures just barely sliced through our target of 1,636 last week, yet have fallen back below that level in recent sessions.

This action...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @Granthawkridge

We’ve been vocal about the strong market internals supporting equities for some time.

We’ve seen one extreme breadth reading after the next from just about all of the major indexes and sectors since last summer.

One index that hasn’t shown a bullish initiation thrust like its peers is the Nasdaq.

We recently pointed out the NASDAQ Composite showing a substantial deterioration in 52-week highs the past few weeks...

But there are still areas of the market with strong & expanding internals. Breadth data continues to be mixed just like we’re seeing from many asset classes right now.

Using equities as an example, while growth has been weak, value and cyclical areas remain strong.

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...