Are you seeing Small-caps breaking out to new 4-month highs relative to Large-caps?

This underperformance in Small-caps began in Q1 2021 which, among other things, sparked the beginning of the bear market.

This week would mark the 18-month point, if a bear market is even something we're still in.

This kind of outperformance from Small-caps is not something we've seen over the past 18-months.

The next new trade in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Last week, we briefly touched upon bringing the market breadth to cryptocurrencies and the considerations we were taking into account.

You can click here to read that post in full.

After some work and many days of cleaning data, we're happy to introduce some great new metrics we're working up to supplement our cryptocurrency research.

Before we dive in, we want to set a brief framework.

It’s important we lay down a foundation before analyzing this data; there’s little point dedicating the man hours to the research if we don’t know why and how to apply it.

Today’s most significant insider transaction report is another Form 4 filing by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A.

Buffet continues to increase his position in Occidental Petroleum $OXY, as he just reported an additional purchase, this one worth roughly $390 million.

Today we have a stock from the Service sector making its way to the Trade of the Week post. It is definitely a crowd favourite, and I'm sure you'd like to note down the levels for this one! Let's check it out!

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

In case you were wondering what we've been up to lately, well here you go.

I couldn't be more excited to announce the launch of our new app: Rangefinder.

We've never received so much demand and feedback from our audience in our 10+ year history here at Allstarcharts.

Don't wait another minute. Check it out for yourself:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended August 5, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers scan.

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 options activity...

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 a pretty penny.

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

Key Takeaway:

• Sustained market strength tends to be quiet.
• Noisy price swings can obscure underlying downtrends.
• Bulls holding serve on rally but hardly pressing an advantage.

The price moves in this environment have been impressive in both directions. One-quarter of the stocks in the NASDAQ are more than 50% above their 52-week lows, but more than 40% are still 50% or more below their 52-week highs.

Last week, for the first time since early April, more stocks on the NASDAQ made new highs than new lows. That ended the consecutive streak of days with new lows > new highs at 83. This was more than two weeks longer than the previous record stretch (which ended in December 2008 - prior to financial crisis lows). Like many of the stocks that make up the index, the NASDAQ Composite is well off its lows. But it is still more than 12% below where it was the last time new highs exceeded new lows.

The...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

The New Leaders

Biotech continues to be among the top-performing industry groups over shorter timeframes. They were among the first groups of stocks to bottom back in May. They were also first in line to complete a reversal pattern back in June. 

This is illustrated by the double bottom in the S&P SPDR Biotech ETF (XBI) above. After digesting gains in a tight range for most of July, Biotech stocks are now resolving higher once again. We think the bullish resolution from this high and tight flag is a good roadmap for what other growth stocks and indexes are likely to do in the coming weeks and months.

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.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was slightly negative as 62% of our list closed lower with a median return of -0.27%.
• The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the big winner, rising by about 20bps.
• The biggest loser was Oil $CL, with a weekly loss of -9.74%.
• There was a 4% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 2%.
• 30% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs.
• ...