We've covered before how much I like buying stocks that are making new all-time highs. I like them, even more, when I can buy call options because premiums are low. And it's a cherry on top when the stock pays a meaty and steady dividend which lends price action support over the long run!

Today's trade checks all these boxes.

Thanks to everyone who joined us live last night on our Mid-month Conference Call.

We had a lot to talk about.

There are plenty of opportunities out there to profit. These are exciting times for sure.

One of the charts I discussed was the performance of different types of stocks since the market bottomed in June.

Here's each sector's performance since June 16th, which was the day that the NYSE new lows list peaked:

This is the video recording of the December 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• The S&P500 & DJ Industrial Avg below overhead supply
• Median Stock is above Key Long-term Support
• Consumer Staples & Low Volatility Stocks outperforming
• Performance of Sectors since Stocks Bottomed June 16th
• Waiting for an expansion of the new highs list
• The implications of a stronger Japanese Yen
• Dollar weakening vs Developed Market & Emerging Market Currencies
• 4-year Presidential Cycle Bullish Sweet Spot
• Small-caps to buy that are outperforming
• Bonds making new highs
• Interest rates impact on Growth Stocks
• Which Energy Stocks To Buy Now
• The relentless bid in Gold & Precious Metals
• Which Gold & Silver stocks to own
• Sugar and Soybeans breaking out
• Copper Underperforming Gold
• Chinese Stocks leading the way
• European Financials outperforming U.S. Financials
• Industrials Leading - which ones to buy
• Mega-cap Healthcare as a defensive trade
• ...

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've turned our attention to the future aristocrats.

In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we curate 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...

All hell seems to be breaking loose at the BOJ.

I'm not going to pretend to know, or care. But I can tell you that Yen traders like it.

And investors in precious metals sure as hell love it.

These are good things to wake up to if you're long gold and silver:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new highs in...

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...

This market environment is not like others that came before it.

Remember people used to complain that only 5 stocks were driving the market?

Now they complain that those 5 stocks aren't working.

But many others are.

And that's the point.

With new environments comes new leadership. We've seen this happen over many decades.

And those 5 stocks that everyone used to complain were driving the market, have now been laggards for quite some time.

I think people just like to complain.

But if you're like us, and would rather look for opportunities to profit instead of just bitching all the time, then it's important to look underneath the surface.

A great way to visualize the broader leadership vs just a few names is in the equally-weighted chart of the S&P500. This...

Fun Fact: In addition to being a Market Technician and CEO of All Star Charts, I am also a Certified Sommelier.

That's like the CMT but for wine.

And just because I own a Winery in Napa Valley and passed a few exams, people think I know everything about wine.

But that's not how it works.

Just like in markets. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. I've passed plenty of exams. But I don't know everything.

That's not what it's about.

Technical Analysis doesn't give us all the answers. But it sure goes a long way in helping us ask the right questions.

In the wine world it's the same thing.

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 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. You can 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. ...