If you're still asking what it will take to spark a sustained rally in equities, it's only because you're not paying attention.

How is it not the US Dollar?

Find me a stronger negative correlation with equities over the past half decade or so.

Todays chart focuses more specifically on the performance of US Dollars relative to Emerging Market Currencies.

Notice how whenever the Dollar goes down, stocks absolutely love it:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

What a day.

The market pulled in from this morning's economic data, plus news out on semiconductors didn't help, either.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Long-term yields are moving lower while short-term yields continue to rise. The spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields is the most negative it has been in over a decade. It has been four decades since the spread between 10-year and 2-year yields has been as negative as it is now.   

Why It Matters: Yield curves invert (short-term yields become higher than longer-term yields) when the bond market thinks that the Fed has already or will soon become too restrictive for the economy to remain healthy. It is the market betting that the Fed will have to cut rates, bringing down yields at the short-end of the curve. Inverted yield curves are a sign of macro stress and have historically been reliable forecasters of recession. The depth of the current inversions is a warning signal from the bond market, a call for caution on the economy and earnings (and by extension, stock prices). It’s not just happening in the US - except for one blip during 2008, the spread between German 10-year and 2-...

So we were talking about a guy who's apparently subsisting only on McDonald's patties for the next 30 days. Just the patty --- no bun, no condiments, no lettuce. He's trying to prove some kind of point that it's not McDonald's burgers that are unhealthy, it's everything else in a typical American's McDonald's order at the drive-thru window.

Ok. Whatever.

But all this "healthy McDonald's" talk got us thinking about the even healthier looking chart of its stock $MCD in recent weeks:

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

From the Desk of Louis Sykes

The collapse of the FTX exchange has been a significant catalyst for market participants to utilize one of Bitcoin's greatest value propositions -- self-custody.

Self-custody is when only you have possession of your digital funds because you control the private key. There's no question; there's no alternative to holding your crypto other than in private cold storage.

Owning your Bitcoin keys voids the necessity for a financial intermediary, completely removing any and all counterparty risk. This is especially important given that crypto exchanges hold a shaky history of being responsible stewards of clients' funds.

When you hold your crypto in hot wallets managed by intermediaries like exchanges, they have all the control. They can freeze your transactions, block withdrawals, set limits on the amount you can transact -- and, in the case of FTX, use your funds for their private self-interest.

We're seeing a massive migration where market participants are waking to the value of self-custody.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Martin Franklin, director at Element Solutions $ESI.

Franklin reported share purchases worth $17.2 million in ESI.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Looks like we're heading for a flat open for the market as I write this morning.

We're still hovering near the $SPX 4,000 level. Resistance is at 4,037, then 4,062.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The dollar experienced significant volatility last week, posting its largest single-day loss since 2015.

As far as we’re concerned, the dollar is done. The weight of the evidence strongly suggests its best days are behind it. But that doesn’t mean it’s straight down from here for the US Dollar Index $DXY.

Instead, we expect plenty more volatility in the coming weeks and months. And when we look beneath the surface of the DXY, we’re at a logical level for the dollar to catch a breather.

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 14, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our 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.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

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