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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended February 17, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or...

Last week, we saw bulls step in to defend critical short-term levels of interest.

Bitcoin closed the week up 11.50%, while Ethereum posted an 11% gain. With much of this historically choppy month behind us, these markets are pushing to the upper bounds of their long-term ranges.

Further, the S&P is coiling right beneath resistance near 4,100.

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.

In bull markets you have leadership groups.

That's just a simple fact that you see in every cycle.

During this bull market in particular, the one that turned 8-months old earlier this week, Industrials have been a real leader.

The Industrials Sector Index Fund $XLI is the best performing sector of them all since the June lows.

Now take a look at Industrials on an equally-weighted basis relative to the S&P500 equally-weighted.

From a broader perspective, Industrials are breaking out to new 14-year highs relative to the rest of the market:

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

If you missed last month's breakout in Sugar, have no fear: It's offering us another opportunity to get long.…

Check it out!

These are the registration details for our Live Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Tuesday February 21st at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was some sloppy action today, and the market is showing weakness.

Let's see if we level out next week.

Support on $SPY is 405, then 402.35. Resistance is at 408.

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

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The New York Mercantile Exchange soft commodity contracts have been ripping.

Orange juice futures recently broke out of a decade-long base, coffee is up almost 20% in a month, and cocoa hit fresh 52-week highs yesterday.

Yet, of all the softs, I like sugar the most.

In fact, sugar held the No. 1 spot as my favorite chart heading into 2023. And it broke out last month!

I missed that move -- not for lack of initiative, more like access issues.

If you missed it, too, have no fear: Sugar is offering us another opportunity to get long.…

Check out the weekly chart:

Sugar futures broke out of a multi-year base in early 2021, climbing more than 30% over the following eight months. Since then it's consolidated within a tight range.

I can’t resist taking a shot at a continuation pattern following a big...

This one's a bit of a short-term tactical bet.

We're fading a recent move and we'll know if we're wrong quickly.

But the nice thing is that we know Uncle Warren Buffet has our back.

Timing matters for this play, so let's get right to it.

This is the video recording of our February 17, 2023, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Prior to this week, we had seen just one day in the past three months with less than 70% of world markets above their 50-day averages. We’ve now had two days in a row with this indicator of global market strength in the yellow zone. 

Why It Matters: The strongest markets have the broadest participation and historically the S&P 500 hasn’t run into much trouble as long as at least 70% of world markets are above their 50-day averages. Risks intensify when this drops below 40%. We discussed this (and other indicators of market stress) in our weekly Townhall as well as the Takeaways summary. 

The Bottom Line is this: It’s not a red flag yet, but rally risks increase if fewer world markets are above their 50-day average and the dollar finding a bid after selling off in Q4 could challenge the strength we’ve seen around the world in recent months.       ...

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

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

Commodity-related stocks remain hot despite a narrative of easing inflation.

Check it out!

It's been a choppy month so far hasn't it?

This is classic behavior for February. See here.

Look at this sloppy hot mess.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by ValueAct Partners.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $10 million in Insight Enterprises $NSIT, increasing its ownership stake to 11.90%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

A complete  late-day sell-off...

As JC said, February is like a hangover from the last three months.

As a trader, I’ve grown comfortable with losing.

Losing money is part of winning over the long run.

There is no winning without losing. Sounds crazy, but traders know this to be true.

We’ve all heard that losses are lessons. They are expensive lessons, but often the most valuable. Nothing valuable comes cheaply.

During the triage phase of dissecting what went wrong, we often have “a-ha!” moments that lead to new rules and new promises, and renewed confidence. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, “the outcome will be drastically different!”

This is all well and good.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. 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 Kimmy Sokoloff

The $SPX was saved by its 21-day moving average around 4,080 and is now trying to hold above its eight-day moving average at 4,124.

Tomorrow is monthly options expiration, so we should see more volatility.