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 technical analysis to the mix,...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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 now, 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 new highs in order to...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The market is punishing investors for owning gold mining stocks.

Sure, a handful of gold miners are holding above key levels.

Buenaventura S.A.A. $BVN, Orla Mining $ORLA, and Harmony Gold $HMY belong to this elite group of outperformers.

But that’s about it.

I’m not giving these trades too much room. And I’m not piling into new long positions. Not yet! 

Here’s why…

Small-caps have had a really hard time this year.

Almost every Small-cap sector is down since the highs in late December. That was 2 months ago.

The day the US Dollar Index bottomed was the exact day that Small-caps stopped going up in price.

That was also the same day that the US 10yr Yield bottomed.

I don't believe that was a coincidence.

You're welcome to.

What I see is a group of stocks struggling to make any progress. It's hard to underperform the Small-cap indexes, but somehow Financials found a way.

Here are Small-cap Financials, which are loaded up with regional bank stocks, rolling over and making new 4-month lows relative to the Small-cap 600 Index.

A lot of people are making a ton of money right now in Crypto Markets.

Bitcoin hit new 52-week highs this week.

Ethereum made a new 52-week high TODAY.

And my CryptoPunk is up over 170% in just 4 months.

To be clear, this internet picture I own is up over $100,000 in just a few months.

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.

Are you paying attention?

This market is not like the one we were in back in November.

Have you adapted to this environment?

Or are you still doing the same things you were doing 3 months ago?

Take a look at High Beta vs Low Volatility going out for the week at the lowest levels since mid-January:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Commodities are making moves.

Cotton is forming a bull flag following last week’s breakout. Coffee futures are coiling below a critical polarity zone. Cattle and hogs are running wild. Even Dr.Copper is perking up, posting positive returns over the trailing five days.

And don’t forget about cocoa futures as they continue to print fresh all-time highs. 

With all this action heating up, let’s turn our attention to one of 2021’s most explosive markets…

Lumber.

Remember all the lumber memes on Twitter?

Dudes were posting their W’s sitting atop stacks of 2x4s and plywood. I’ll never forget it. 

As a trader, I prefer to avoid lumber futures. It’s a thin market. But I can’t ignore the yearlong base forming on the daily chart:

...

This is the video recording of the February 2024 Mid-month Conference Call.

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. Click here to check it out.

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

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the...

You know the old saying that Bull Markets are more fun than Bear Markets?

It's true.

And not because you can't make money in a bear market. You can. In fact, you usually make money much faster in bear markets. That's just how the market behaves.

But the truth is that bull markets are definitely more fun.

I can tell you from first hand experience over the years. The parties in bull markets are more fun and they are more frequent, than in bear markets.

Last night was definitely a bull market party. Josh Brown turned 46 and I turned 42.

Strazza even flew up to New York for the festivities.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Fed Chair Jerome Powell continues to rule the markets with an iron fist, mercilessly punishing any who doubt his supreme will. 

Or maybe I should stop daydreaming at my desk. 

Either way, this little fantasy is a helluva lot more entertaining than the monotonous uptrend in US Treasury yields. 

But I’ve found boredom – when not taken seriously – can lead to neglect.

That’s where process steps in to save the day. 

It’s hard for the market to catch us off guard if we’re constantly reviewing the charts.

And these next two bond charts demand our full attention…

First, the High Yield Bond ETF $HYG relative to the US Treasury Bond ETF $IEI: 

It’s an oldie but a goodie. I look at this chart every single day. 

It’s that important – not just to the bond market, but the entire marketplace, including stocks and...