From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our “Under The Hood” column for the week ending December 25, 2020.

What we do 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.

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 we’re producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.

As the major indexes continue to trade at or near record highs, we continue to...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

We recently held December’s Monthly Conference Call which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll provide a summary of the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts/topics we covered along with commentary on each.

Let’s dive into it.

"JC, how can you be buying stocks up here?"

"JC, stocks are overvalued"

"JC, stocks have gone too far too fast"

"JC, aren't we due for a correction?"

I've heard some version of this every single day since the Spring.

These are the types of questions that come my way during bull markets. I don't get them when stocks are in downtrends, that's for sure. Different types of questions come in those environments (How low can we go? Aren't we due for a bounce? etc)

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In a further effort to identify individual equities that fit within our larger more Macro thesis, we couldn't be happier to roll out and share our latest bottoms-up scan: "The Minor Leaguers."

We'll also be writing a post every other week where we outline some of our favorite setups from the watchlist. This is the first edition.

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

In order to make it onto our Minor League 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.

And what better time than now to launch a small-cap focused column!? We've seen very strong evidence of a structural rotation down the market cap scale, suggesting a new period of outperformance from small-caps in recent months/quarters.

This should be a great way to take advantage of that trend. Let's dive right in!

Here'...

It's that time of the year again. This is when we hear things like the "January Effect", the "First 5 Days of the Year Indicator", "Santa Claus Rally", "January Barometer" and all sorts of seasonal-type conversations.

Remember, we're right in the heart of "The Best 3 Month Period of the Year". You always hear, "Sell in May and Go Away", but as we pointed out on Nov 6th, it's waaaay more important to "Remember to Buy in November", or "Buy in October and Get Yourself Sober". Either one of those works.

Wall Streeters have all kinds of silly sayings to help remember important things. "The trend is your friend", "Don't fight the Fed", and "Bottom Fishing Can Be Hazardous To Your Wealth" are all good ones that you've probably heard before.

Today I want to talk about the significance of the Santa Claus Rally, and the fact that it might not even come at all. And that in and of itself would be the signal.

Let me explain.

This week Howard and I discuss what "Technology" actually means. With companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook representing ZERO PERCENT of the Technology Index, people continue to group them into Tech regardless.

Is that right? Should we ignore Dow Jones and their weightings? Or is it important to acknowledge which stocks are in these indexes and which ones aren't?

When asked about underperformance from Europe and Emerging Markets, Howard says "I filter the world to only see what's working. I'm all about investing for profit and joy, not misery and pain"

This was a fun chat.

Here's the video in full:

We've liked the Consumer Durables space for several months now and the sector is finally accelerating to the upside in December.

Today we're highlighting major breakouts in two of the sector's top names, Havells and Titan.

Let's get into the charts and how we're trading them.

This is the video recording of the December 2020 Conference Call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

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 in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

We continue to pound the table on leadership down the market-cap scale. There's been strong evidence over the past few weeks/months suggesting this is a structural trend reversal in the large vs small-cap ratio.

Many key indexes - both large and small, sit at crucial inflection points. Many of the small and mid-cap indexes are also extended and sporting extreme momentum readings, making for a logical level for sellers to step in.

It would be a healthy development for SMIDs to take a breather here and pass the baton back to large-caps for a bit.

The...

After drastic underperformance since March, one chart suggests that Gold could be setting up to outperform large-cap Indian stocks in the coming weeks and months.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Last week's Mystery Chart was the Uranium ETF $URA zoomed all the way out to its inception and inverted.

I really hate to do that to you guys, but someone actually guessed it!

More importantly, though, most of you were selling the chart... so buying the Uranium ETF. Yes, you heard that right... buying Uranium.

In this post, we analyze a handful of other rarely covered and lesser-known risk-assets - but first, let's look at Uranium.

For months now, we've been pointing to the fact that metals are doing great. It's just that Gold isn't one of them.

Base metals are where the smart money has been flowing. Copper has been hitting the highest levels since 2013 and absolutely embarrassing the performance of its precious metals counterpart, Gold which has not been so golden.

Copper outperforming Gold is consistent with higher Interest Rates, and we've been getting those too.

More specific to Base Metals on an absolute basis, the positive correlation with Emerging Market Stocks is off the charts. Here is Iron Ore making new 7-year highs overlaid with the Emerging Markets Index so you can see how closely they trade together: