From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Silver futures have undercut a critical shelf of former lows.

I find it difficult to hold a bullish bias for precious metals and mining stocks, at least from a tactical perspective.

And when I zoom out to longer time frames, overhead supply looms large across the entire space.

Understand, I believe precious metals and their related stocks ultimately resolve higher, printing fresh all-time highs. 

But before we can put money behind this bullish thesis, these next three charts need to throw it in reverse…

The conditions for the re-birth of a bull market were met earlier this month, but the confirmation of strength has been underwhelming. Of the six indicators on our bull market behavior checklist, only one is currently meeting the bull market criteria.

More Context: Our bull market behavior checklist is a balance of breadth & price indicators, designed to reflect persistent turns toward risk or opportunity. We don’t want to be so focused on what is happening at home that we lose sight of what is happening overseas, so we use both US and global market data. These indicators are not discrete signals that can be overly influenced by day-to-day volatility (of which there has been plenty) in recent months but are ongoing measures that reflect a continuous environment. While our checklist is not indicating a healthy breadth of bull market behavior, it would be premature to suggest that the rally off of the Q4 lows is on its deathbed. But after last week, the rally has gone from feeling tired and rundown to...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw a nice gap up on the $SPX today, but we weren't able to hold on to 4,000 or 4,017.

The market decided to close the gap down, which is all fine and well. But I'd like roughly that area held at 3,980 or so.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Silver futures have undercut a critical shelf of former lows.

I find it difficult to hold a bullish bias for precious metals and mining stocks, at least from a tactical perspective.

And when I zoom out to longer time frames, overhead supply looms large across the entire space.

Understand, I believe precious metals and their related stocks ultimately resolve higher, printing fresh all-time highs. 

But before we can put money behind this bullish thesis, these next three charts need to throw it in reverse…

First, here’s the daily chart of silver:

Nothing bullish is happening for precious metals, while silver slides below multi-year support.

Last Friday’s breakdown and oversold momentum reading represent red flags. 

Precious metals demand caution as long as silver holds below 21.40.

Why?

For starters, a breakdown in silver indicates dwindling demand.

We want to witness the entire space participate. Gold’s not going to post new all-time highs all on its lonesome.

Broad participation from silver, platinum, and mining stocks is key.

Silver...

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

Last week, most crypto markets saw moderate selling pressure following retests of critical levels of resistance.

At the same time, momentum is diverging in a bearish fashion, with our indicators putting in lower highs on this most recent high in price action.

Further, equity markets have begun to feel the pressure after selling off on a retest of resistance levels.

We'd previously noted that Bitcoin and equity indices had briefly decoupled on short time frames, pointing to resiliency on the part of crypto markets.

Last week, we saw this correlation return, with Bitcoin being dragged lower by selling pressure in risk markets generally.

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Kelcy Warren, co-founder and executive chairman of Energy Transfer $ET.

Warren reported a purchase of roughly $17 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The $SPX had about a hundred-point drop in a span of a week's time.

It'll take a bit of proving if this market wants to rally.

It's the weekly commodity edition of What the FICC?

Coffee, cocoa, and OJ are all ripping higher.

So can we extend an underlying bullish thesis for ag commodities to the grain contracts traded on the CBOT?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Regardless, I want to be prepared if and when the Chicago grain markets break out…

It's the weekly bond edition of What the FICC?

The narrative is quickly shifting back to tighter monetary policy following last week’s higher-than-anticipated CPI and strong economic data.

With these newfound recessionary fears circulating, I want to share a chart I like to avoid… The 2s10s treasury spread.

In some market environments Technology, and other sectors full of growth stocks, tend to outperform.

Usually interest rates are falling in that type of market.

You got a good dose of that for about decade.

US Stocks were the global leaders while Europe and other parts of the world, without that exposure to growth, made little progress.

See here.

And now with interest rates rising, other sectors have emerged as leaders. Industrials, for example.

This is all perfectly normal for this type of environment. We've seen it before, and to expect...

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

Earlier this week we held our February 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

I can’t stop talking about the softs trading on the NYMEX.

Coffee, cocoa, and OJ are all ripping higher. It seems only a matter of time before sugar and cotton join the fun.  

So can we extend an underlying bullish thesis for ag commodities to the grain contracts traded on the CBOT?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Regardless, I want to be prepared if and when the Chicago grain markets break out…

Let’s review the most actively traded contracts for corn and the soybean complex. First up…

Corn

Here’s the May corn futures contract:

There are two ways to play it.

You could buy strength above 684, targeting 765. Or you could sell weakness on a break below 639, targeting 575.

Both work. It just depends on the next directional move.

“Hey, Ian, it seems like you’re cruising for a bruising at these...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market was straight down most of the day.

We saw a little bounce, but nothing that impressive.

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 which you can check out here.

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...

This is the video recording of our February 24, 2023, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

This is the video recording of our February 24, 2023, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

Stocks continue to be slippery with the S&P 500 down 6 out of the last 8 trading days.

I'm in the camp that this is a constructive pullback after a fantastic run to kick off 2023. JC has been pounding the table all month about how sloppy, digestive trading action in the month of February is perfectly normal market behaviour.

With February drawing to a close soon, I wouldn't be suprised to see this downdraft exhaust itself soon. As such, I'm going to make a tactical bet that a leading name in the banking/finance sector is going to hold these levels and potentially lead the way back to 2023 highs.

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Annual data shows that the Federal government’s cost to service its debt (as a % of GDP) reached its highest level in two decades last year. 

Why It Matters: Debt servicing costs were at a generational low just a few years ago. Now persistent inflation is pushing bond yields higher and the latest CBO projections show federal debt levels continuing to soar (new highs that aren’t cause for celebration). Interest payments on the debt are moving from afterthought to fiscal burden. Without a rediscovery of fiscal discipline getting a handle on inflation is going to be a challenge and that is likely to keep yields higher for longer. A quick return to the market and fiscal conditions of the past decade does not appear to be in the cards.