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:

• Our macro universe was green this week as 72% of our list closed higher with a median return of 0.52%.
• This week, Lumber $LB was the winner, closing with a 9.07% gain.
• The biggest loser was the Volatility index $VIX, with a weekly loss of -4.12%.
• There was a 2% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 55%.
• 57% of our sector list made fresh 4-week highs, 21% made...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Large-caps take the 2021 crown as mid-caps & small-caps struggle to get back in gear. US strength not being echoed among global equities. Tactical risk management model gives benefit of the doubt to bulls.

• Entering 2022, Real Estate, Technology, Health Care and Consumer Staples hold down the top spots in our S&P 500 sector relative strength rankings.
• Our industry group-based heat map shows deteriorating conditions across Energy and Financials and improving conditions in Staples and Utilities. Leadership from defensive groups is not usually consistent with risk-on behavior.

The All Star Charts team put a report out about the Metals sector end of last week, highlighting undercurrents investors should be keeping an eye on. Not everything is sending "all-clear" signals yet. But there is one particular name that definitely has my attention and is offering a good reward-to-risk opportunity to get involved.

I'll spare you any further preamble and we'll get right into the money quote that has me interested:

Another week, another IT trade setup that we're looking at. While there is a pickup in the market sentiment, the ideas with most conviction are coming through from IT.

Let's take a look at what we have today!

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.

It's a new year!

Are you ready to crush it?

I am.

But it seems investors are coming in skeptical of what 2022 might bring.

As we've already mentioned, the data points to investors being much much more bearish coming into 2022 than they were going into 2021 or 2020, where they were incredibly bullish and optimistic going into those years.

But as we know all too well, stocks peaked in February of both those years, on an absolute basis in 2020 before the COVID crash, and internally in 2021 when many stocks started their declines.

This has been a common theme so far in my year-end analysis: using the words "New Highs" much more than usual.

Premium Members can download our Monthly Chartbook here.

Take a look at a broad measure of European stocks coming out of a 20-year base and now making new all-time highs.

Last week, we outlined how the recent recovery in leverage in the derivative markets combined with thin end-of-year liquidity would exacerbate volatility. This same message continues to ring true.

Open interest is elevated, and the market has become susceptible to an unwind via a long/short squeeze in the coming weeks. Even a small supply-and-demand catalyst has the potential to cause a big shift given these current market conditions.

We want to dedicate this week's report to describing how we're approaching this period and defining the probabilities we're weighing with each scenario.

The data is in.

2021 is in the books.

And it was a good one for most risk assets. Although the majority of stocks had their struggles at some point throughout the year, sector rotation continued to drive index prices higher. And it wasn't just stocks, risk assets in general had one for the record books.

The Average stock in the S&P500 was up 27.6% in 2021.

The Median S&P500 stock returned 25.2% for the year.

The market had been a mess for most of 2021. But even as the weakness persisted at the end of the year, we repeatedly highlighted the strength coming through in the IT space.

Well, this post is no different. We have breakouts, people! Let's take a look!

Below is the IT index with the important levels that we'd like to track.

Nifty IT has been sticking its head out every time we've looked for bullish momentum and strength in the market. And that strength is evident from the chart below when you look at the bottom pane of the chart. The relative strength pops right off the page. We can also see that the average drawdown has been a low 15% while most sectors have it way worse with no show of strength whatsoever.

What's our pick from the sectors even now?

IT.

Click on the chart to zoom in.

It was a big year for Crypto, Web 3.0, the Metaverse and all things Blockchain.

In case you didn't hear, a lot of people made a lot of money. And "a lot" is probably understating it.

How'd you do?

Either way, win lose or draw in 2021, we're looking forward to 2022. But in order to do so responsibly, it's important to know where we've come from.

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts: