It sure feels like a long time ago now, but it's been less than a decade since the European Union underwent a rather serious sovereign debt crisis.

This set off a roughly two year bear market for International Stocks as well as a rangebound mess for US stocks.

After this bout of volatility, most risk-assets carved out significant lows in 2016 and rallied higher until global risk peaked in 2018. Then it all fell apart again last year.

This brings us to today, where we're now seeing European countries and indexes trade right back up to their 2018 or pre-COVID highs left and right.

While diversified global indexes like MSCI EAFE $EFA and MSCI Europe $VGK recently reclaimed their former highs from 2014, 2018, and are already well above their pre-COVID peaks - they are now approaching a far more important area of overhead resistance at their pre-financial crisis highs.

Last week, we used the BRIC countries $BKF to illustrate this theme of more and more international indexes trading at inflection points. Today, we'll do the same...

This is the video recording of our May 3, 2021 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood” column for the week ended April 30, 2021. This column is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off with our Minor Leaguers column.

In this column, we 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.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers… there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that...

This week we're looking at a long setup in the Metal sector. There are a handful of sectors that are outperforming the market as Nifty 50 continues to move sideways, and Metal has been a consistent name there.

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 context of the big picture 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.

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

One major theme that we’re watching closely right now are the growing number of risk assets at or near critical levels or key former highs.

We continue to see a variety of world stock market indexes approach crucial inflection points. As the list keeps getting longer, our cautionary view of the potential for further choppiness in many markets gets stronger.  

Where prices resolve from here in major indexes like the MSCI Emerging Markets, EAFE -- and even some major domestic indexes such as the Russell 2000, are about to provide us with some big-time information into the health of global equities and risk-assets in general.

Today, we’re going to look at one of these diversified international indexes that finds itself in this same boat as it approaches its pre-financial crisis record highs.  

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We've covered the Growth vs Value relationship ad nauseam since late last year.

We continue to believe that a structural trend reversal in favor of Value is underway.

We laid out our thesis and the key level we're watching to potentially prove it wrong... That is and has been 1.70 in the Russell Large Cap Growth vs Value ratio.

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

Something we’ve been working on internally this year is using various bottoms-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. One way we’re doing this is by identifying stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small, to mid, to large, and ultimately to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B) they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn’t just end there. We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, and Salesforce, to a myriad of others… all would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table you will notice...

On this week's episode of Bearish or Bullish, we talk about Year 2 of Bull Market cycles for stocks. Is this one those? Like 1976, like 1983, like 2004, like 2010?

What about Ethereum continuing to hold its breakout? Why is Ether doing so much better than Bitcoin?

Financials and European stocks breaking out of historic bases?

European Super Leagues? The Knicks don't suck?....what the heck is going on around here?

Let's discuss:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

The weight of the evidence still suggests it's prudent to be a buyer, not a seller, of risk assets for more meaningful time horizons.

Shorter-term, the market looks increasingly messy. For the first time in over a year, defensive assets are beginning to stabilize at logical levels of support, while stocks and major risk groups achieve our upside targets. Even a handful of some key Intermarket ratios are potentially diverging from the broader averages.

The macro backdrop definitely leans that this is just a sideways consolidation in an ongoing uptrend.

Let's not forget that the S&P 500 has just recorded its greatest 52-week gain since the late 1940s, so some...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In our continued effort to identify individual equities that fit within our larger Macro thesis, we recently rolled out our latest bottoms-up scan: "The Minor Leaguers."

We write a post every other week where we outline some of our favorite setups from this universe of stocks.

We've already had some great trades come out of this column and couldn't be happier about the early feedback.

Moving forward, we'll be rotating this column with "Under The Hood" each week.

Ultimately, to make the cut for our Minor Leagues list, you must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters.

Then, we simply sort the stocks by their percentage from new highs. Easy done.

The idea is to catch the strongest names while they're still small and have serious upside potential. If any of these stocks ever climb up...