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 can take a more tactical view in order to better understand and gain insight into 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

• Just about all of the major diversified equity indexes in our macro universe - both US and International, were higher this week. The only exceptions were Small and Micro-Caps, as well as Emerging Markets.
  • Here is the S&P Global 100 $IOO, which just tacked on an additional 3.5% and closed at fresh all-time highs for the third consecutive week... and it did so in about as bullish fashion as possible with a marubozu candlestick. As you can see, this candle opens at the lows and closes at the highs, illustrating the strong and steady...

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

We held our April Monthly Strategy Session Thursday night which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

For these calls, we really take a step back and put things in the context of their structural trends by focusing only on Monthly charts. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises.

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

Let’s dive into it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our “latest Under The Hood” column for the week ended April 2, 2021. As a reminder, this column will be published bi-weekly moving forward, and rotated on-and-off with our new 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...

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

Many of the same themes that we came across in last week's Commodity Report continue to play out.

Overhead supply keeps demand at bay while price churns sideways, offering mixed signals.

Like many areas of the market, Commodities are a bit messy.

While sideways price action and choppy market conditions are the norms at the moment, there is one consolidation in the Commodity space that demands our close attention.

As JC pointed out in last night's Monthly Strategy Session, one of the most important charts right now is the Copper/Gold ratio as its intermarket implications span far and wide.

As the...

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

I think we can all agree that the market is an absolute hot mess right now.

The Precious Metals complex is as good an example of this as any right now.

In this post, we’ll use this shiny group of commodities as a case study to illustrate the mixed signals we see not just here but in asset classes all over the globe these days. 

It’s a major development, to say the least - so we’d be irresponsible not to monitor it closely as the way things resolve from here will likely have implications that span across markets, far and wide. 

We’ll also provide an update of our post from earlier in the month whereby we outlined a trade idea in Gold Miners.

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.

While the same themes we've laid out in previous reports continue to hold strong, we have seen some recent deterioration, particularly in the large-cap sectors and indexes.

Despite an increase in bearish developments, the overall weight of the evidence is still firmly in the bull camp, and we remain aggressive buyers of stocks and risk assets, particularly over any longer-term timeframe.

It is also very important to consider the recent volatility within the context of the primary trend... which is still unequivocally higher in EVERY major US Index.

Over the upcoming weeks, our view is that many of the recent leaders are likely to consolidate at logical...

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.

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 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 the ranks...

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

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y-axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.

This chart can be of any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes it’s an absolute price chart, other times it’s on a relative basis.

It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!

The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize it objectively.

While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…

So let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

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...

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.

We continue to reiterate the same themes and pillars that support our bullish macro thesis. This would include an abundance of evidence pointing to risk appetite, rising developed market yields, strength from commodities, and of course the ongoing rotation toward cyclicals, value, and international stocks, among others...

Just about anywhere we look, we're seeing investors gravitate further and further out on the risk spectrum.

At the same time, some of the former market leaders have retreated since February and are currently hovering near key levels. Similarly, even the markets' more recent leaders have shown signs of weakness the past few weeks as some have violated critical tactical levels while others are consolidating at logical levels...

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

The same strong rotational currents that have been in place in the US since last summer have finally begun to spill over to International stocks... but, not all of them.

For the first time in about a decade, evidence suggests that stock markets around the world have finally built a strong foundation relative to their US counterparts, and might just be ready for a sustained period of outperformance.

How big the move will be and how long it will last are always some of the most difficult variables to predict. We can merely position ourselves accordingly based on the information we do have, and then be keenly aware of new data points as they come in, and constantly re-evaluate and adjust our outlook as appropriate.

As for the potential structural bull-to-bear reversal in the long-running trend of outperformance from US stocks... the seeds have definitely been planted for such a development to occur.

Now, we can only sit...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our “latest Under The Hood” column for the week ended March 19, 2021. As a reminder, this column will be published bi-weekly moving forward, and rotated on-and-off with our new 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...