From the desk of Steve Strazza

Have you ever heard of the Nokkie-Stokkie?

It’s forex trader lingo for the Norwegian Krone/Swedish Krona… and right now this obscure cross is setting up for a classic failed breakdown.

After undercutting key support in early May, it’s snapping back toward this level now. And with each passing day, it’s looking more and more like a bear trap.

We’re not just writing about this unheard-of FX pair to amuse you. Believe it or not, the currency pair carries valuable insights.

It’s one of our most trusted intermarket energy whisperers.

So it's no surprise the scoop-n-score setup in the NOK/SEK looks almost identical to the one in Crude Oil Futures:

Crude is working on its own bear trap — carving out a tactical reversal pattern just below a shelf of former support.

...

In trading, most of us chase systems, setups, signals, and edge. And while all of those matter, they pale in comparison to this one truth:

We don’t see the market as it is—we see it as we are.

Every chart we analyze, every trade we take, every hesitation we feel… it’s all colored by our own internal filters: our fears, hopes, beliefs, memories, and projections.

What we think is a battle with the market is often just a conversation with ourselves.

This is the Inner Market.

And if you’ve ever wondered why it’s so hard to “just follow your plan,” or why you keep making the same mistakes even when you know better—it’s probably not because of your strategy. It’s because of your relationship with yourself.

That’s why I’m incredibly excited to be hosting a live conversation with Andrew Menaker, PhD—a renowned trading psychologist who’s spent many years working with professional traders to help them build self-awareness, self-trust, and psychological resilience.

Trading Psychology = Know Thyself + Be Thyself + Accept Thyself

This isn’t just philosophy—it’s the core of consistent...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in XLE.
2. No adjustments since the last report.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ricardo Sarraf @nullcharts

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via...

The way I learned it is that gold moves first. 

And then copper. 

And finally crude oil. 

That’s the intermarket theory and order I’m familiar with for commodities. 

Jason and the guys at Gold Rush do a great job of covering intermarket relationships and what they all mean. 

They’ve been all over these commodity trends all year. Some have been great, like gold. Others are messy, like copper. And some downright bad, like crude. It’s been a mixed bag to say the least. 

But today, all the buzz is about silver. It’s having its best day of the year as it rips higher out of a bull flag. 

Our volatility squeeze indicator suggests a big move is brewing, and there is plenty of runway considering the pattern hasn’t even broken out yet. 35.25...

We’ve seen this before.

Gold quietly builds momentum, breaks out to new highs, and suddenly the whole world starts paying attention. 

Then Silver wakes up violently. 

And the miners? They go vertical.

This playbook isn’t new. It’s just unfolding again.

Right now, Gold is trading at all-time highs, Silver is coiling under decade-long resistance, and Silver miners are showing early signs of a major trend reversal relative to the underlying commodity.

The stage is set, and the next act could be explosive.

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.

Nowadays, to make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, 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...

Last week, I got involved in Coinbase as a play on a new alt-season being on the cusp of breaking out. But Coinbase isn't the only brokerage with a chart that looks great.

Another one broke out to a post-IPO high today and I'm getting involved to broaden my exposure to this space.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in KRE (regional banks)
2. No adjustments since the last report.
3. Closed ARKK position.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

One thing I’m looking to do more of here at ASC is share some of the scans we’re running internally each week.

Our roots are in top down technical analysis. We do it better than anyone. And we share a lot of it, but we don’t share enough.

We’re literally running hundreds of ad-hoc scans each week. And we’re going to start giving one away every weekend.

This one is a clear and simple leadership scan, which is why I like it so much. This is the textbook top down approach. It doesn’t get any better.

We start with the best sectors, drill into the best subgroups, pick one, and then find the top stocks.

This week, Industrials stand out as a clear leader—second only to Tech, up nearly 9% in May, and the first sector to complete the V-shaped recovery and retest all-time highs.

Within Industrials, the...

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.