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From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

It’s messy out there.

The CPI data came in a little warmer than expected today. And currency markets aren’t quite sure what to make of it.

Despite the overarching range-bound action and intraday indecision, I continue to find trade setups with well-defined risks.

Today, I’ll outline another vehicle to short a potential falling dollar – the Swiss franc.

I prepared to get long the USD/CHF pair last October. But the trade never materialized. Instead, it caught lower as the USD downtrend picked up steam in early November.

Fast-forward a few months, and I’m ready to short the USD/CHF pair.

Before we break down the setup, let’s zoom out:

The USD/CHF pair has remained in a structural downtrend since the 2000 dot-com bubble peak. We can interpret the past decade as a bearish consolidation within an ongoing downtrend. 

Some...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to...

It's the weekly Gold Rush!

This week Strazza and I dig into the COT profile for Gold and Silver, revealing the sentiment behind the smart money.

Check it out...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What will ignite a precious metal rally to new all-time highs?

We often discuss the dollar and real yields as critical catalysts for a sustained uptrend for gold and silver. It’s simple: These shiny rocks will struggle if the dollar and rates continue to rise. 

But there’s more.

I want to share another crucial piece of the puzzle – commercial positioning.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

This is the video recording of today's LIVE Short Squeeze Video Special.

We walk through every single one of our favorite most shorted stocks, including entry points and targets.

These are the exact names we want to buy in THIS particular market environment.

It's a can't miss video:

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I want to share with you a trade idea I wouldn’t have considered a year ago.

I balked at first. This trade’s simply not in my wheelhouse. But I’ve learned so much here at All Star Charts over the past three years.

And "to be open-minded" has been one of the most impactful lessons. 

Now, this setup has my full attention. Risk is well-defined, and the upside potential is heavily skewed in our favor.

I can see the spin on the pitch.

I’m talking about natural gas…

Before I lay out the levels, let’s step back and look at the big picture.

Natural gas stocks, represented by the Natural Gas ETF $FCG, haven't experienced the same extreme sell-off as natural gas futures $NGF:

In fact, they’re hanging tough much like other energy stocks. We’ve seen this before with crude oil and the Energy Sector ETF $XLE in recent quarters. 

So far, crude oil is carving out a base while XLE continues its...

From the Desk of Ian Culley 

Markets don’t always trend higher or lower. In fact, traders often deal with churn – which sometimes is nothing more than a range-bound mess.

"Sideways" is a trend that's all too easy to forget after last year’s historic volatility. Even bonds became risk assets in 2022!

I found it odd when bonds failed to react to last week’s rate hike along with other long-duration assets.

But the lack of bond market volatility might be exactly what risk assets, especially stocks, need right now.

Check out the chart of the US 10-year yield:

The US benchmark rate continues to hold above 3.40%. This has been our line in the sand for months, coinciding with the June pivot highs from last year.

The market has proven the significance of the level. More importantly, the near-term trend is turning sideways. Notice the 14-day average directional movement...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As our Premium Members already know, we have a laundry list of scans that we run internally on an almost daily basis.

Different market environments, naturally, are more conducive to certain scans and less so to others.

We think our Freshly Squeezed scan is perfect for the current market. In fact, we wrote our initial report in December just to be sure we wouldn’t miss the moves that have taken place in recent weeks. We’re confident there is more to come.

With so many individual issues in massive drawdowns as the broader market begins to turn a corner, we’re witnessing some serious short-covering rallies in some of the most beaten-down names.

In fact, it’s already starting to happen. Bed, Bath & Beyond $BBBY was up by almost 100% the other day. It’s very likely they’re going bankrupt. But that’s just the kind of market we’re in.

Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with the highest short positions. When a stock is heavily shorted, we know there are incremental buyers waiting in the...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...