From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The dollar has gone from slinging cheese to lobbing cookies.

Sellers finally got ahold of the US Dollar Index $DXY on Tuesday, sending it on its steepest single-day decline since October 2022.

Recall what followed for the dollar…

The DXY formed a major top and fell victim to not one but two subsequent 1 percent-plus daily drawdowns. 

Check out the DXY chart with the one-day rate-of-change in the upper pane:

The DXY dropped almost 1.5% during Tuesday's session. That’s a huge move for a currency (with the exception of the Turkish lira and perhaps the Polish zloty).

Today, a "darling" company in the media thanks to new obesity drugs and other good news hitting the media airwaves is selling off. In fact, its having its worst day relative to its sector peers in many years.

Someone forgot to tell Eli Lilly $LLY that a new bull market run may recently have gotten under way. Of course, it was already way ahead of the game. In fact, look at this long-term chart:

These aren't usually the trends I like to take the other side of.

But perhaps it's gone on a little too long and it's ready to pause and retrace?

This stock could get cut in half and the long-term trend would still be intact.

When we zoom in a little closer, we see a very notable (and sizeable) gap from this summer where the stock jumped from $450 per share to north of $500 per share overnight:

This is the best time of the year for stocks.

And stocks are doing very well.

In other words, perfectly normal market behavior.

In fact, this is exactly when Small-caps historically start to outperform their large-cap counterparts.

And sure enough, that's exactly what we're seeing.

Here's a great chart from Jeff Hirsch and Jay Kaeppel showing these seasonal tendencies:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Miami is pure gold.

It sways to its own beat, enticing and intoxicating even the insular traveler.

Incidentally, I was engulfed by the city’s rhythm as I attended a family wedding last weekend.

And it was wild!

I danced with family and friends and sipped bubbles at sunset in Key Biscayne straight through to the early morning hours along South Beach.

But this old dog would never have made it to dawn without my wife’s crazy cousins. 

They displayed an appetite for reckless abandon that gold longs to witness from its own crazy cousin…

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended November 11, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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 seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market, and therefore market participants.

We're analyzing how humans behave.

That's the edge that a good technician has over other types of investors.

Conditions change. Market environments go through different cycles. But the humans act in similar ways.

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 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 Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

One of the most important themes this year has been the persistent outperformance from mega-cap technology.

These equities have demonstrated outstanding relative strength again in recent weeks, and we're not seeing any signs of this trend slowing down.

Today, we have an excellent vehicle for expressing our bullish thesis on these leaders.

Let's get into it.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What a wild broad-market reversal yesterday!

Powell supposedly stated the obvious or blurted out what was on everyone’s mind. I don’t know. I haven’t watched the video or reviewed yesterday’s treasury auction. 

And I won’t.

I’m more interested in the “what,” not the “why,” as the former has proven far more valuable for navigating markets.

Nevertheless, the message is clear: no one wants to buy bonds. 

It makes sense to me…

Check out 30-year T-Bond futures:

Long-duration bonds are in a clear downtrend, stair-stepping lower.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

For the longest time, investors in the United States have been rewarded for their home country bias and their overexposure to large-caps and growth stocks.

The secular trend of underperformance from international equities relative to the United States commenced over 15 years ago. Many investors have simply never seen stocks outside the US outperform over any material timeframe.

It's not a matter of impossibility; rather, our recency bias tends to mistake unfamiliarity for the extraordinary.

A regime of sustained value outperformance isn't isolated to the realm of fantasy. It was only last year that holding growth over value was nothing short of opportunity cost, while international equities outpaced their US counterparts through Q4 and into the new year.

Recently, Meb Faber joined us on the morning show, where he discussed the topic of international investing. He argued that this is the best time in history to make the value trade, both domestically and internationally.