We have a new sector that's making a new all-time high! Nifty FMCG is successfully putting in higher highs and higher lows. And today we're here to discuss a long idea from FMCG.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to the latest edition of Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended July 22, 2022. We publish this report bi-weekly and rotate it 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 that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual...

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...

We’ve seen very little insider activity the past few weeks and today is no different, as we have just a single Form 4 on our Hot List.

This lack of interest is reflected in the ratio of insider sells to insider buys, which just hit its highest level since early 2021.

This to me is the big one.

The chart below is the one I'm watching the closest.

You guys have been hearing me pound the table about the US Dollar and what a hard time stocks and crypto will (continue to) have in a stronger Dollar environment.

So here you have it. This is the Emerging Markets ETF $CEW back to the same level where it bottomed out the only 2 other times it was ever down here:

I remember 2010-2011 like it was yesterday.

Precious metals were all the rage.

Silver miners were the meme stocks of their day.

There was so much money being made in Silver.

And then all that changed.

No one has heard from those silver surfers ever again.

And now here we are watching the Silver ETF $SLV close the week at its lowest price in history relative to the S&P500:

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

It’s been a while since we had two long ideas from The Hot List in a single week. 

But with markets in rally mode for the past month, we’ve had some strong stocks pop up on our scan.

While new highs are hard to trust in this tape, any names setting up for breakouts are stocks we want on our radar.

If they're unable to make a decisive upside resolution now, they'll probably be some of the first stocks to do so when the selling pressure finally eases.

We talked about one name we can put in this category earlier in the week, which you can read here. Today, we have another one.

Immunocore Holdings $IMCR appears on our list for the second day in a row, as General Atlantic LP filed a 13D revealing an ownership stake of 11.50% in the biotechnology company.

You see what happens when the US Dollar isn't ripping higher every day?

I wasn't making this up.

It's all about the Dollar my friends.

And Dollar Futures aren't even off by that much, just down a couple of points over the past week.

But still, the Dow is up almost 2000 points, Ethereum is up 60% and Active Managers just posted their second highest weekly increase in exposure in the history of the NAAIM survey:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Monday night we held our July Mid-Month Conference Call, which ASC Premium Members can review here.

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

Let’s get right into it!