This week marks the one-year anniversary of the top in 2020 for the S&P500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq100 Indexes.

Everything immediately fell apart after that and we experienced one of the greatest crashes in history.

This leads some people to think that with these indexes now making new all-time highs once again, a crash can happen at any time....

But what most people conveniently like to forget is that everything else had already been rolling over by this point last year. The only indexes left still making new highs were those 3 U.S. Large-caps.

Today, let's run it back to last year and see what was actually going on, so you can see just how different things are today. All of these charts are from posts and client presentations I gave last February.

First, take a look at Small-caps, Mid-caps and Small-caps all making lower highs by this point last year:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

We recently held February’s Monthly Conference Call which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts/topics we covered along with commentary on each.

Let’s dive into it.

The need to be right vs wanting to make money. Every trader has to solve this problem and it's not easy.

On this week's podcast I sit down with Dr. Andrew Menaker to talk about what he refers to as "Your Inner Market".

You guys already know how much I love a good chat about investor psychology, so this was really fun for me.

I hope you enjoy!

We're getting long oil.

There I said it. Now I'm going to go hide behind my oil derrick while the EV bros throw their rechargeable batteries at me.

Don't hate the player, hate the price action.

This is the video recording of the February 2021 Conference Call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

We continue to harp on the risk-on themes that support our bullish macro thesis.

Rotation down the market-cap scale, commodity strength, and defensive alternatives making new relative lows have been some major themes we continue to see play out.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: There is ample evidence of investor complacency, optimism, and aggressive risk-taking.

The behavior of the broad market (another breadth thrust last week and the weekly NYSE + NASDAQ new high list is at its highest level ever) suggests some of this may be justified.

Sentiment is likely to become a more acute headwind when rally participation narrows and/or optimism remains elevated in the face of market volatility.

For now, optimism has been revealed as a mile wide but only an inch deep, with concern rising the moment the market stops rallying.

If you're ignoring the Indian Stock Market, I think you're doing yourself a huge disservice.

Even if you never plan on trading stocks in India at any point in your life, it doesn't matter. There's amazing information coming from there.

For example, take a look at that relative strength in Indian Bank stocks before US Stocks, and Stocks in general, rallied throughout 2019. That was an epic rally, if you recall.

The Indian Banks had already been telling us that it was coming!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

If Bitcoin's run to $50,000 or the latest YOLO stocks aren't too distracting right now, you might have noticed Crude Oil just registered new 52-week highs for the first time since fall 2018.

Or maybe you're ahead of the curve and caught our post about the Energy Sector experiencing what looks like a bullish initiation thrust just a few weeks ago.

Or perhaps you saw Financials just closed the past week at fresh all-time highs... finally breaking out after almost 15-years of no progress!

On top of all this action, the US 10-Year Yield is also pressing on its highest level in almost a year.

It's clear that more cyclical stocks and economically sensitive Commodities are taking on leadership roles. We're in quite the risk-on environment.

Considering the evidence we just listed, it's finally time to address the elephant in the room...

There's nothing wrong with betting on the next direction of a stock, or the market in general. But let's be responsible about admitting that we're wrong, when we get it wrong.

Regardless of your strategy, whether it's technical, fundamental, economics or even if you base your analysis on the movements of the stars and the moons, it all comes down to risk management.

How good are you about admitting that you got it wrong and moving on? If you suck at it, then you're not going to do very well and you'll be gone soon. That's economic Darwinism at it's finest.

The ones who are the best at admitting they were incorrect in their assessment, and doing so the fastest, are the ones who make (and keep) the most money over time.

It's really that simple.

How do you lose weight? Eat less and workout more. Duh.

But cupcakes and pizza are delicious.

Just like admitting we're wrong is very difficult for us. It's one of the hardest things for humans to do.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

Another fresh Mystery Chart!

What we do here is take a chart that's captured our attention and remove the x/y-axes as well as any other other labels that'd help identify it. This chart can be any security of any asset of any timeframe - on absolute or relative basis.

Maybe it's a ratio, a custom index, or maybe 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 it 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

In a further effort to identify individual equities that fit within our larger Macro thesis, we recently rolled out our latest bottoms-up scan: "The Minor Leaguers."

We write a post every other week where we outline some of our favorite setups from the watchlist.

We've already had some great trades from this universe and couldn't be happier about the early feedback.

Moving forward, we'll be rotating this column with "Under The Hood" each week.

In order to make it onto our Minor League list, you must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters.

Then, we simply sort the stocks by their percentage from new highs. Easy done.