This is our ASC Research Q3 2022 Playbook.

Investors have a lot of questions right now. With sentiment and at some of the most pessimistic levels in history, what will it take for some of these trends to change in the second half of the year? I believe some major trends are already changing.

The Playbook takes a step back and looks at things from a more Structural perspective. If you're specifically looking for more tactical opportunities, you can check out this week's Live Mid-Month Conference Call.

Here's what we'll be discussing in our Q3 Playbook:

• Stocks (International & U.S.)
• U.S. Sectors & Industries
• Market Breadth & Sentiment
• Commodities
• Currencies
• Intermarket Analysis
• Cryptocurrencies
• New Trade Ideas
• Overall Strategy

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US dollar and interest rates are still two of the most important charts out there. You’re probably tired of hearing it, but their future direction impacts the entire marketplace.

And, believe it or not, the currency market provides a great read on both.

Bullish data points continue to roll in left and right, supporting dollar strength. From the Korean won and Singaporean dollar to the euro and the pound, the dollar seems to break out against another currency every few days. 

No matter where we look, the US dollar is dominating. 

When we evaluate the trends in emerging market commodity currencies, it reveals insight into the recent rise in interest rates. Instead of showing strength, these currencies are catching lower -- which doesn’t jibe with a rising rate environment.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s an overlay chart of the US 10-year yield and our Emerging...

Shares of Apple stock just went out at the highest levels in history relative to the S&P500.

This is what we refer to as "Relative Strength".

Apple had originally peaked relative to the market almost 2 years ago towards the end of the summer of 2020.

That's when the Apple's underperformance first began.

And now here we are making new all-time highs once again:

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

We discussed:

• 34 Straight Weeks Of More New Lows Than New Highs
• Strong Negative Correlation between Stocks & Dollars
• DJIA & DJTA holding short-term support so far
• S&P500 Remains Below overhead supply
• Small-caps & Financials testing significant support levels
• Europe's STOXX 600 back to 2000/2007 highs
• Apple hits new All-time Relative Highs
• US 10yr & 30yr Yields run into 2018 highs
• Breakevens & EW Commodities peaked months ago before Yields
• Still no expansion in the new 20 day highs or 63 highs lists
• Commercial Hedgers remain historically long Crude Oil
• Gold, Silver & Gold Miners break down to new 52-week lows
• 10yr Minus 3-mo Yield Curve breaks down to follow 2s-10s
• Bitcoin & Ethereum hold above former cycle peaks
• New Trade Ideas: Both Long & Short

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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 stock is about to move in their...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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...

Do you see what happens when the US Dollar is falling?

Stocks and Crypto go up.

This IS the catalyst.

Do you want to know what will get stocks and crypto back into bull markets?

It's not the fed, it's not the president, it certainly isn't a former president, it isn't a war or any kind of "news" event.

It's the US Dollar. Period.

Over the weekend we saw the price of Ethereum jump to new 30 day highs.

Looking a little deeper, you'll find that both Binance and Avalanche also hit new 30 day highs.

Some of you trade cryptos and others don't. But that's not really my point here.

As you've heard me say a million times by now, these crypto assets are just growth stocks (probably software stocks if you want to be more specific).

And the correlations prove it. They've never been higher, in fact.

If you've been following along over the years, you've heard me mention plenty of times that breadth thrusts tend to cluster together early on in market uptrends.

Well, a funny thing happened yesterday - we had our first 9-to-1 up volume day on the NYSE since May.

To quote Willie, "Stringing 2 of these together without an intervening 9-to-1 down day would be a very positive development".

Here's what that looks like:

From the desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Sellers are in the driver's seat when it comes to commodities these days.

Besides natural gas and livestock contracts, few commodities present buying opportunities that we like. In reality, most have either broken down or are on the verge of breaking down. 

As the latest bout of selling pressure shows little signs of easing, we’re likely to experience more damage in the coming days and weeks.

Copper, one of the most economically sensitive and widely followed commodities in the world, is a great example of recent weakness. It can’t stop falling.

Given the downside volatility raw materials have experienced since the start of the summer, many trends are stretched. We don’t want to be too bearish here. We want to let the dust settle.

With that said, it’s hard not to imagine where the bears will strike next.

And when we scroll through our charts, it looks like they have crude oil in their sights.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a chart of crude...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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

And here’s how we arrived at it:

Filter out any stocks that are below their May 10th 2021 high, which is when new 52-week highs peaked for the S...

The US Dollar took a little break from going up yesterday, and that has continued a bit this morning.

A funny thing happens when the Dollar isn't ripping - stocks and crypto prices are able to rise....

Today is Crypto Fridays around here at Allstarcharts.

We start with our 7AM meeting with the whole Crypto Team going over everything from the major trends, to new coins popping up on our screens, or the latest from the private world of defi and web 3.

Then at 10AM ET we hold our weekly Crypto Strategy session for Members of ASC Crypto.

[Call +1 (323) 421-7910 to access ASC Crypto Trade Ideas and Reports]

In addition to all of this, I like to schedule my "Crypto" type meetings to...