From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

What remains 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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Overall, that was a decent bounce today.

We’ll see if it continues through the week.

If we do get a heavy one, $SPY has potential to 438.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US Dollar Index $DXY has posted its tenth week consecutive in the green. 

And with the dollar off to a solid start Monday morning, an eleventh looks promising.

This is excellent news for dollar bulls.

But it’s a gloomy prospect for risk assets, especially precious metals…

Check out the performance chart anchored from DXY’s July 13 bottom:

US stocks ($SPY), international stocks ($EFA), emerging market stocks ($EEM), gold ($GLD), silver ($SLV), and even US T-bonds ($TLT) are falling under a rising dollar. (Crude oil $USO has 99 problems, but the dollar ain’t one.)

Yes, US T-bonds remain a risk asset from a price perspective. A strengthening dollar will accompany declining bond prices if the US dollar and interest rates continue to climb together.

Global risk assets and precious metals do not perform well when investors flock to the US dollar.

Bonds are skidding lower. US stock indexes are breaking down. And precious metals? Well, it could be worse.

GLD is outperforming global equities, including the S&P 500, over the trailing two months.

Last week,...

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Broadwood Capital.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $11.6 million in STAAR Surgical Company $STAA.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market has been in a steady decline since mid-September.

I'll be truthful: As of right now, not too much is interesting to me.

I need to see how stocks act today.

On the eve of Chart Summit 2023, let's take a look at how some of the most important areas of the market are holding up during what is seasonally the most bearish time of the year.

Technology represents close to 30% of the S&P500 and almost half the entire Nasdaq100. And here it is going out at its lowest weekly close since May:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market has been in a steady decline since mid-September.

I’ll be truthful: As of right now, not too much is interesting to me.

I need to see how stocks act today.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Broadwood Capital.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $11.6 million in STAAR Surgical Company $STAA.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Monday night we held our September 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.

Let’s get right into it!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Markets are adjusting to rising rates as investors weigh the possibility of “higher for longer.”

Bonds are breaking down to fresh lows. The major US stock market indexes are chopping within a range (perfectly normal from a seasonal and cyclical perspective). And commodities are kicking back into gear. 

All of these intermarket pieces fall neatly into a dynamic puzzle. Nothing appears out of place.

But the best information comes from markets presenting atypical behavior or defying expectations.

One commodity is doing just that as we head into the weekend...

Silver!

Did silver not get a copy of the FOMC press release? Or perhaps silver ignored it altogether… 

Silver should sell off as the 10-year yield hits a new sixteen-year high and the US dollar heads toward its...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the remaining names by their proximity to new 52-...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We had a little bit of a bounce during the morning hours.

We'll see how the indices react next week.

The post-fed interest rates decision hangover this week has thrown stocks back into the sideways slop zone. Therefore, until conditions change, we're going to keep selling premium to ride this out.

Today's trade is a defined risk premium collection play that gets us out just before earnings.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We had a little bit of a bounce during the morning hours.

We’ll see how the indices react next week.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Jack Hightower, the chairman, president, and CEO of HighPeak Energy $HPK.

Hightower reported an HPK purchase worth a total of $8.4 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

To those who celebrate, I wish you a blessed year ahead!

The market is bouncing some. I'd like another push lower, but we can see a bounce shortly.

The stock market is messy, not trending higher, and frustrating many investors who haven't studied their market history.

This type of market environment, this time of the year, is EXACTLY what we should expect as investors.

If the market was NOT acting this way, then that would be weird.

Sometimes the market ignores seasonal trends. And that tends to be an important signal.

But, to be clear, this is definitely NOT one of those times.

The market is doing exactly what it should be doing.

See: Weakest Time of the Year

Over half the stocks on the NYSE are below their 200 day moving average. Same with the S&P500.

Here's what the index itself looks like near the lower end of this multi-month range:

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 and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

By adding our technical analysis to the mix, the Young...