From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

Copper is challenging the lower bounds of its range.

The AUD/JPY is attempting to reclaim former support.

And the S&P 500 is digging in at the AVWAP from its COVID lows.

These are some of the most important charts and levels in the market right now. 

But there’s one chart that tops them all… 

In our view, the US Dollar Index $DXY is the key to this market. 

It’s currently struggling to resolve higher from a multi-year base after reaching its highest level since 2002.

The breakout could stick and lead to a sustained uptrend. Or, it might fail. Either way, the outcome will have wide-ranging impacts on risk assets.

If the breakout from this multi-year double bottom is a valid one and the dollar continues to trend higher, we’ll continue to see downside pressure for the majority of risk assets.

The...

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...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

In last week's Perspectives piece, we opted not to wade into the discussion of capitulation and proactive efforts to call a bottom. The best evidence of a bottom is only available after the fact and by that point, the focus is already on whether the ingredients for a sustainable rally are present. 

Our checklist is designed to move the conversation along in a productive direction. We are looking for conviction that rally attempts either are or are not sustainable. Among the indicators we are paying attention to in this regard is our Risk On / Risk Off Indicator. Our focus this week is on this and other Risk On / Risk Off metrics. Our Risk On / Risk Off Indicator is not based on a specific market signal but is the accumulated message across several pairwise comparisons within and across asset classes. 

The message right now is clear: The Risk Off environment we have been in since earlier this year remains intact. 

Breaking down the various components shows that we aren't seeing...

Sentiment is at its worst in a long time, traders are taking heavy losses, and supply has essentially transferred from weak hands that capitulated to stronger ones.

It's hard for us to expect significantly lower prices in the wake of the events of last week. As such, in yesterday's letter, we asked,  "Was that it?"

But, looking over shorter time frames, the overall picture is still a messy one.

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

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

Gold as a commodity is close to the heart coming from India. It is generally the first instrument of investment. Most often it's also the first gift for a newborn baby. We also have important days such as Akshaya Tritya and Diwali when retailers consider buying gold auspicious.

The inherent faith in the yellow metal to save us from bad days has been a part of the psyche for a long time. With that in mind, the levels to track in Gold become important from a personal and professional standpoint.

Gold has been battling several levels of resistance for a while now. The last time that Gold was making waves in the market was in August 2020 when the price traded close to 56,200. Since then, the price has been on a sideways journey.

In the week gone by, the price slipped below the support of 50,670.

So what are the levels we're tracking now after this move? Let's take a look!

The most significant insider transactions on today's Hot List are Form 4 filings by the co-founder and an executive vice president of DISH Network Corporation $DISH.

Between the two, they disclosed a $24 million purchase of their own stock.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column where we'll cover all the action for the week ended May 13, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

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...

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...

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

It's been almost a joke at this point to cover Bitcoin from an analytical perspective when it's been nothing but representative of the Nasdaq, US growth stocks, and long-duration assets in recent months.

People often ask what it'll take for correlation to macro to die out.

Here's a take.

Bitcoin has its whole separate supply dynamics taking place on-chain away from macro.

The reality of the situation is that there's a small group of highly sophisticated traders utilizing perps and the traditional calendar futures market in great size bounding price action to the US indices. But under the surface, there's a new group of investors and a cohort of preexisting ones that are laying down support.

Zhu Su of 3AC likens it to a supply "gentrification" to convicted crypto natives, institutional buyers, and HNW individuals, that when complete will see a significant dislocation between equity markets and Bitcoin. The price action of the last week is an extreme example of this transfer.

Another take I like is from BitMEX'...