From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

Copper is challenging the lower bounds of its range.

The AUD/JPY is attempting to reclaim former support.

And the S&P 500 is digging in at the AVWAP from its COVID lows.

These are some of the most important charts and levels in the market right now. 

But there’s one chart that tops them all… 

In our view, the US Dollar Index $DXY is the key to this market. 

It’s currently struggling to resolve higher from a multi-year base after reaching its highest level since 2002.

The breakout could stick and lead to a sustained uptrend. Or, it might fail. Either way, the outcome will have wide-ranging impacts on risk assets.

If the breakout from this multi-year double bottom is a valid one and the dollar continues to trend higher, we’ll continue to see downside pressure for the majority of risk assets.

The...

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're turning our attention to the future aristocrats.

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

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column where we'll cover all the action for the week ended May 13, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

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.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional...

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 Louis Sykes @haumicharts

It's been almost a joke at this point to cover Bitcoin from an analytical perspective when it's been nothing but representative of the Nasdaq, US growth stocks, and long-duration assets in recent months.

People often ask what it'll take for correlation to macro to die out.

Here's a take.

Bitcoin has its whole separate supply dynamics taking place on-chain away from macro.

The reality of the situation is that there's a small group of highly sophisticated traders utilizing perps and the traditional calendar futures market in great size bounding price action to the US indices. But under the surface, there's a new group of investors and a cohort of preexisting ones that are laying down support.

Zhu Su of 3AC likens it to a supply "gentrification" to convicted crypto natives, institutional buyers, and HNW individuals, that when complete will see a significant dislocation between equity markets and Bitcoin. The price action of the last week is an extreme example of this transfer.

Another take I like is from BitMEX'...

Over the years investors have come up with new and creative ways to lose money in the market.

But Silver just keeps helping investors do it the old fashioned way:

As you can see, Silver is down and making new 52-week lows.

And this brings up a bigger question.

The market is not a children's book.

I know sometimes we all kind of wish it was.

But it's not.

As investors, we can approach the market pretending it's one way, or we can approach it knowing it's the other.

That's up to you.

For us, we never even think about who is on the other side of our trades.

Why would we?

But it's something that's come up recently and probably worth addressing.

These are the registration details for our live mid-month conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our next Live Call will be held on Thursday May 19th 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 Thursday night:

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

There’s always a bull market somewhere.

But the environment is tough right now.

Volatility is sweeping across markets. The dollar is catching a defensive bid. And the major averages continue their downward trajectory as investors desperately look for signs of a bottom. 

Yet, despite the bearish action gripping markets, we’re still finding bases we want to buy.

And, to no surprise, many of those smiley faces are in the commodities market.

That’s where we want to focus our attention.

Today, we'll highlight the wheat complex, outlining some tactical setups that complement our bullish structural outlook for commodities and grains.

Let’s dive in!

First up, we have Chicago wheat:

Earlier in the spring, this contract skyrocketed to new all-time highs. It’s since corrected, forming...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

Defense wins championships. 

It’s important to remind ourselves of this as risk continues to come off the table.

The largest stocks in the world are losing critical support levels, and even the leaders are coming under pressure. Bonds are catching a defensive bid, credit spreads are as wide as they’ve been in years, and investors are fleeing to the dollar for safety.

Meanwhile, the classic risk barometer – the AUD/JPY – is breaking to fresh lows.

This all speaks of defensive positioning.

Here’s a daily chart of the AUD/JPY:

Just a few weeks ago, the AUD/JPY was rallying to its highest level since the summer of 2015. Now it’s more than 7% off those highs. And as of this writing, it has slid more than 250 pips in today’s session alone.

This...