From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza

*** Click here to read the reveal post for this Mystery Chart ***

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.

This chart can be of any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes it’s an absolute price chart, other times it’s on a relative basis.

It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!

The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.

While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…

So, let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For about a year now, we’ve focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B. That was fun, but it’s time we branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

The way we’re doing this is simple…

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.

Over the last few weeks, our patient approach to the market following December's volatility has continued to pay off.

In last week's report, we outlined how we're viewing this recent dip as yet another low-conviction dip-buy, and why we anticipate messy and whipsaw-prone price action before a tradable bottom is found.

There's little to update on since that report.

Spot flows have been neither bullish nor bearish, but neutral. We need to see demand come in from investors to form a tradable bottom. The market appears to be in oversold conditions, making this a logical place for this to happen.

Elevated leverage in the derivative markets has made futures the dominant force on price action. There are early signs of a short squeeze developing, but we need to see investor demand support it.

Apart from a few exceptions, we're sitting out most of the action in the alts for now.

Some people think that Small-cap stocks underperformed last year.

But those are probably the ones left holding the bag in small-cap growth stocks.

You see, Small-cap Value stocks did great!

One for the record books, in fact.

This is our ASC Research Q1 2022 Playbook.

With the current market environment giving us many mixed messages, what better time to dive in and see what's happening underneath the surface?

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

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 Tuesday January 18th 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:

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

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

Commodities are making a fresh leg higher, and energy is leading the way.

Crude oil is back above our risk level around 76. And the energy-heavy CRB Index is at its highest level in more than seven years.

But it’s not just energy contracts that are working right now. We’re seeing strength across all areas of the commodity complex.

This broadening participation is evident in our equal-weight commodity index, which just hit new highs after consolidating for the past two quarters.

This chart shows the CRB Index and our equal-weight index side by side:

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:

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.

The frustration we're seeing from permabears is at a whole 'nother level these days.

I don't need to name and names. You know who they are. They've been calling the top since the last top. It's what they do.

They claim the system is broken. They cry that nothing matters anymore.

And to be clear, it's not that 'nothing' matters.

It's just that the things the market cares about, are NOT the things you think it should care about.