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'...

Over the years investors have come up with new and creative ways to lose money in the market.

But Silver just keeps helping investors do it the old fashioned way:

As you can see, Silver is down and making new 52-week lows.

And this brings up a bigger question.

The market is not a children's book.

I know sometimes we all kind of wish it was.

But it's not.

As investors, we can approach the market pretending it's one way, or we can approach it knowing it's the other.

That's up to you.

For us, we never even think about who is on the other side of our trades.

Why would we?

But it's something that's come up recently and probably worth addressing.

These are the registration details for our live mid-month conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our next Live Call will be held on Thursday May 19th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Thursday night:

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.

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

There’s always a bull market somewhere.

But the environment is tough right now.

Volatility is sweeping across markets. The dollar is catching a defensive bid. And the major averages continue their downward trajectory as investors desperately look for signs of a bottom. 

Yet, despite the bearish action gripping markets, we’re still finding bases we want to buy.

And, to no surprise, many of those smiley faces are in the commodities market.

That’s where we want to focus our attention.

Today, we'll highlight the wheat complex, outlining some tactical setups that complement our bullish structural outlook for commodities and grains.

Let’s dive in!

First up, we have Chicago wheat:

Earlier in the spring, this contract skyrocketed to new all-time highs. It’s since corrected, forming...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

...

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

Defense wins championships. 

It’s important to remind ourselves of this as risk continues to come off the table.

The largest stocks in the world are losing critical support levels, and even the leaders are coming under pressure. Bonds are catching a defensive bid, credit spreads are as wide as they’ve been in years, and investors are fleeing to the dollar for safety.

Meanwhile, the classic risk barometer – the AUD/JPY – is breaking to fresh lows.

This all speaks of defensive positioning.

Here’s a daily chart of the AUD/JPY:

Just a few weeks ago, the AUD/JPY was rallying to its highest level since the summer of 2015. Now it’s more than 7% off those highs. And as of this writing, it has slid more than 250 pips in today’s session alone.

This...

Technically, not everything can underperform.

There are always some groups of stocks that are doing better than the others. Whether that means going up in price faster, or going down in price slower.

In some cases, like more recently, some stocks do well on an absolute basis well others lose value altogether.

This year we've seen the largest dispersion of returns among US Sectors in over 20 years. The difference in returns between Energy and some of the Growth areas like Communications or Tech have been historic across the board.

Here's Energy relative to Technology, as well as Energy relative to the overall market, as defined by the S&P500:

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

This week has seen one of the largest blow-ups in crypto history.

I think the severity of the Luna collapse, in relative terms, can't be understated.

From trading at $100 a month ago to 2 cents today.

From being the 3rd largest coin in the asset class two weeks ago to currently testing support at zero.

From an 80% drawdown in a "stable" coin that's supposed to be pegged to $1 USD.

There's an incredible amount of wealth that's been lost in this blow-up.

There are a lot of charts that looks very similar to this one.

Tops are a process right?

This is what this one looks like:

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

Credit spreads are widening to their highest levels since late 2020.

If it feels like we just mentioned spreads and the falling HYG/IEI ratio, it’s because we did – and for good reason! They provide valuable insight into the overall health of the market.

High yield bonds $HYG rolling over faster than US Treasuries $IEI implies stress on credit markets and trouble for equities.

This is critical information.

We’ve been closely following the HYG/IEI ratio for months as it repeatedly tests the lower bounds of its range. It broke down to fresh lows in March, only to bounce higher with many risk assets.

Two months later, this crucial risk ratio is printing fresh 52-week lows again. The main difference is that the overall market environment has drastically changed since the last time we were at these levels.

Even the strongest stocks can’t catch a bid as investors...