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.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

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.

The way we did this is simple…

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

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

Markets trend. Trends persist. 

Those crucial Dow Theory tenets form the foundational premises of technical analysis.

As technicians, identifying trends is a central component of our work.

But, most of the time, markets remain range-bound, as we experienced during the choppy mess that dominated the stock market and so many risk assets last year.

However, during that time, commodities continued to rip higher.

Now that the rally in raw materials is reaching significant areas of overhead supply, it would make sense for this leadership space to follow stocks and enter a corrective period.

In other words, the uptrend in commodities that has persisted since 2020 is likely to take a breather and turn into a sideways trend.

Let's talk about it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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:

This is the video recording of the May 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• The average stock down 30-45% depending on the exchange
• Most consecutive weeks of more new lows than new highs since 2008
• How will US Dollar near former highs impact stocks
• Energy Stocks & Commodities at a Critical Juncture
• Major Bond Futures Contracts at Key Support: 2s, 5, 10s & 30s
• Consumer Discretionary the worst performing sector
• New Short Ideas in Growth
• Stocks Showing Relative Strength bucking the trend
• International weakness - stocks are below overhead supply
• Commercial Hedgers continue to buy Energy Futures
• Precious metals underperforming stocks and commodities
• Chilean Lithium continues to shine
• Agriculture stocks and commodities still trending higher
• A look into some recent insider transactions
• Crypto at key support levels, similar to the bond market

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

Bonds are digging in at some familiar levels.

For years now, we’ve pounded the table about the importance of the 2018 highs for various risk assets.

That’s because those former highs marked significant peaks for both the stock market and certain procyclical commodities and currencies during the last cycle.

As far as the bond market is concerned, 2018 was also when yields peaked. Benchmark rates in the US are testing these old highs.

As such, it’s not the 2018 highs but the 2018 lows that we’re paying attention to when analyzing the prices of Treasuries.

A handful of bonds and bond funds are trying to find a bottom at these key former lows right now. 

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a chart of the 20+yr T-Bond ETF $TLT:

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.

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

Copper is challenging the lower bounds of its range.

The AUD/JPY is attempting to reclaim former support.

And the S&P 500 is digging in at the AVWAP from its COVID lows.

These are some of the most important charts and levels in the market right now. 

But there’s one chart that tops them all… 

In our view, the US Dollar Index $DXY is the key to this market. 

It’s currently struggling to resolve higher from a multi-year base after reaching its highest level since 2002.

The breakout could stick and lead to a sustained uptrend. Or, it might fail. Either way, the outcome will have wide-ranging impacts on risk assets.

If the breakout from this multi-year double bottom is a valid one and the dollar continues to trend higher, we’ll continue to see downside pressure for the majority of risk assets.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats.

In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money."

Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column where we'll cover all the action for the week ended May 13, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here 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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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.

These are the registration details for our live mid-month conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our next Live Call will be held on Thursday May 19th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Thursday night: