From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

So we were talking about a guy who's apparently subsisting only on McDonald's patties for the next 30 days. Just the patty --- no bun, no condiments, no lettuce. He's trying to prove some kind of point that it's not McDonald's burgers that are unhealthy, it's everything else in a typical American's McDonald's order at the drive-thru window.

Ok. Whatever.

But all this "healthy McDonald's" talk got us thinking about the even healthier looking chart of its stock $MCD in recent weeks:

From the Desk of Louis Sykes

The collapse of the FTX exchange has been a significant catalyst for market participants to utilize one of Bitcoin's greatest value propositions -- self-custody.

Self-custody is when only you have possession of your digital funds because you control the private key. There's no question; there's no alternative to holding your crypto other than in private cold storage.

Owning your Bitcoin keys voids the necessity for a financial intermediary, completely removing any and all counterparty risk. This is especially important given that crypto exchanges hold a shaky history of being responsible stewards of clients' funds.

When you hold your crypto in hot wallets managed by intermediaries like exchanges, they have all the control. They can freeze your transactions, block withdrawals, set limits on the amount you can transact -- and, in the case of FTX, use your funds for their private self-interest.

We're seeing a massive migration where market participants are waking to the value of self-custody.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The dollar experienced significant volatility last week, posting its largest single-day loss since 2015.

As far as we’re concerned, the dollar is done. The weight of the evidence strongly suggests its best days are behind it. But that doesn’t mean it’s straight down from here for the US Dollar Index $DXY.

Instead, we expect plenty more volatility in the coming weeks and months. And when we look beneath the surface of the DXY, we’re at a logical level for the dollar to catch a breather.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended November 14, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our 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...

Is there anything more important than the US Dollar?

They keep fighting me on it, but the market keeps proving them wrong.

It's the Dollar stupid!

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...

The list keeps on growing.

A month ago there was only 1 sector trading above its 200 day moving average.

Then a couple of weeks ago, there was a second.

And now there are 5:

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.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 5000 points in less than a month. That's almost an 18% ripper in your face.

How's it feel?

Was it as good for you as it was for me?

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

For weeks, evidence has pointed to a top in the US Dollar Index $DXY.

Sentiment, volatility, and momentum thrusts have each suggested an end to the US dollar wrecking ball.

Despite the mounting evidence, price hadn’t indicated any significant weakness in the structural trend – until yesterday!