After 33 months of zero progress, the market is proving that it is finally time for Transportation stocks to move forward. We call these big bases. It was a well-deserved consolidation in prices after a historic run throughout 2016-2017.

This all seems perfectly normal to me. Not sure why some media outlets are telling investors about turmoil not seen since 2008. Maybe they're looking at the charts upside down? Or blindfolded perhaps?

Here is the second most important stock market index on planet earth breaking out of a long consolidation to new all-time highs:

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 and into mid-cap status (over $2B) then they enter our radar.

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 – from the likes of Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, and Salesforce, to a myriad of others… they all would have been on this list at some point.

When you look at the stocks in our table you will notice we are only focused on technology and growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online Retail, Solar, and more.

Then as any good technician, we are filtering the list by those names that are closest to 52-week highs. This allows the cream of...

In an environment where volatility has picked up at the index level and there are more mixed signals in the market, we want to be more selective in the longs and shorts we put on.

An important part of tightening up our risk management across the board is knowing what timeframe is relevant to us, both at the portfolio and individual stock level.

Today we want to look at an example in Jubilant Foodworks to highlight this concept.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Last week’s Mystery Chart featured an ominous rounding top, complete with price violating key lows as it aggressively collapsed. 

Today, we’re going to turn that frown upside down. It actually wasn’t a rounding top at all.

We inverted the chart, as we often do, in an effort to make some of you out there aware of any bullish or bearish biases you may have. 

In other words, if you were buying this chart (which most of you were NOT), you are really a seller. And if you’re a “seller” who only bought the Mystery Chart because you have a bullish bias, you might now be wondering why you would ever bet against such a nice base. 

When we flip this chart around, you can now see we’re looking at a massive base on Japan’s Nikkei 225.

In this post, we’ll check in on the Nikkei and see what market breadth is signaling about the internal strength of the Japanese stock market.

This week we're looking at a long setup in the Textiles sector.

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 relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

Like we discussed last week, Equity Markets are becoming more of a mixed bag. This week, we'll expand on this theme.

Prices continue to flirt with the risk levels we've outlined for various assets in recent weeks. We still believe the weight of the evidence is in favor of the bulls, but with so many assets at inflection points, we're paying close attention to every new day's data as it comes in.

Starting at the US Index table, we can see the Nasdaq 100 $QQQ and Transports $IYT had a quieter week, while laggards such as the SMIDs caught a healthy bid, all up about 4.5%.

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From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended October 2, 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.

Here is this week's list of the most popular stocks. Now, let's see what's going...

This is the video recording of our October 2, 2020 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

This week I chat with Howard about the things that he just doesn't think are going to happen. What can we check off? He mentions major moves in the Nasdaq and also Apple missing on a quarter or new product.

He then flips the script and asks me about what's changed in my life since becoming a father. Tune in to find out!

A lot of things stood out as I updated our Monthly Candlestick Chartbook for September.

On Monday we're hosting a live strategy session for Members to discuss all of our key takeaways, but today I want to share a few themes worth noting.

Today we're taking a look at a stock in the Consumer Discretionary Sector. Ticker symbol $MCD

They make burgers, fries, chicken and a variety of desserts. The food is okay, I guess. The stock is way better.

This looks like a year-long base trying to break out to new all-time highs.

We only want to be betting on this long if it is above 220. Otherwise, we can't make that breakout argument. Our upside target is 280.

So far today, I’ve ignored what I can only assume are tens of thousands of posts and articles dissecting last night’s debate. I’ve said it before — As market participants, the election doesn’t interest us. It’s the change in seasonal strength this time of year that has our attention. 

But I’m sure they’ll continue pumping out more political gossip than anyone could possibly absorb. After all, it’s 2020. Most folks are stuck at home, anxious, and searching for any meaningless distractions they can find.  

If you’re nervous about the election or the markets, tonight’s your chance to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. September is over and the fourth quarter begins tomorrow. That means we have fresh batch of monthly candles to review! It doesn’t get any better than that… 

If you do one thing this week, it needs to be a thorough review of these longer-term trends. It’s one of my most important rituals that allows me to tune out the noise better than most.

I encourage you to put away those five-minute charts and zoom out for the night. You might be surprised at what the market’s telling you. [I’ll be knee deep in my charts prepping for...