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...

During this morning's internal strategy session with the All Star Charts team, one theme we hit upon was that many of the stocks we want to be long have already had big runs making it irresponsible to get long here, and all the stocks we want to get short have already had big recent legs down and we don't want to chase those either!

I mean, to give you an idea, just look at the charts of healthcare ETF $XLV which is made up of many small-cap names, and $IWM -- the Russell 2000 small-cap index -- both are going in completely opposite directions! That pretty much sums up the predicament we find ourselves in right now.

It's a messy market out there!

So, naturally, we should look at companies that manage risk as their business!

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

All eyes have been on the US dollar and interest rates in recent weeks.

Last week, we saw a timely kick save from the bond market as the 30-year reclaimed its summer lows. Whether the latest rebound in rates will hold is yet to be seen as the 10 and 30 are currently chopping sideways just above our risk levels. We’re watching the long end of the curve closely to see how yields react at these critical levels.

But what about the US dollar?

When we analyze the US Dollar Index $DXY, it’s hard to be bearish, as price is consolidating in a tight continuation pattern following a base breakout and swift leg higher last month. As usual, the direction in which the DXY resolves will have broad market implications and will affect risk assets around the globe.

We know you’re probably tired of hearing it, but this is another big week for markets -- especially the dollar!

As investors brace themselves for...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

On Monday night we held our December Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.

Let’s get right into it!

We talk a lot about relative strength around here.

"Which are the strongest stocks and sectors?"

"Buy high and sell higher!"

"What's on the new 52-week high list?"

"How many new highs are we seeing?"

These are all questions we're regularly asking. Like every day.

But at the same time, it's important to understand what's not working. And what are the implications of those things not working?

There are two main groups on my radar.

This is the video recording of the December 2021 Mid-month Conference Call.

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 direction and make them money.

Then we flip through our list of stocks flashing unusual...

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 December 10, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off 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...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

I saw this headline from CNBC last week:

"Sell-off in risky tech stocks feels a lot like the 2000 bubble and may not be over yet"

Meanwhile, here were Tech Stocks last week:

We're looking at Tech stocks relative to the Nasdaq.

Think about it, anything denominated in the Nasdaq is going to have a hard time going up.

But Technology finally is. And on a relative basis, it's still no where near those bubble highs.

If there is anything that can get this market going it's the US Dollar.

And granted, the S&P500 did just close at a new all-time high. That did happen Friday.

But as we have documented relentlessly here, most stocks are not doing that.

The Average stock on the Nasdaq is down over 30% over the past few quarters.

Most Emerging Markets got destroyed. Chinese Internet is down 60%. Biotechs are crushed down almost 40%. The IPO Index killed. And ARKK Funds are down over 40%.

All is not well underneath the surface.

In fact, all of those sectors I mentioned peaked in February this year. That's when the Nasdaq New Highs list peaked and Nasdaq Advance-Decline lined also peaked.

Most importantly (potentially) is that was when Aussie Dollar peaked, and I don't...

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: