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

While most uptrends have come under pressure in 2022, the US dollar has remained as strong as any.

This dollar strength, particularly at the index level, is nothing new. We've been discussing it.

It's been taking place all year, driven by the major pairs such as the euro, the yen, and the pound.

However, something new is the burgeoning strength beneath the surface, even outside of the big developed market currencies. We've been seeing dollar internals improve drastically in recent weeks.

And now we're seeing momentum accelerate for the US Dollar Index $DXY. Today, DXY is on track for its largest single-day gain since the pandemic crash more than two years ago.

All of the evidence suggests this dollar strength is the real deal.

Let's talk about what it means and how we want to position for it.

Here's the US Dollar Index ripping to its highest level in almost 20 years:

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.

This is the video recording of our May 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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 April 29, 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.

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 the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny.

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday May 3rd @ 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 Tuesday evening:

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

The rally in some commodities has been near-vertical this year.

And we’re seeing this strength across the entire complex -- from energy contracts like crude oil to base metals such as tin and even grain markets like wheat.

While these kinds of moves are bullish over longer time frames, when things get too hot (like they have), it’s often not sustainable on a tactical basis. 

This is the situation right now for a lot of commodities. We think a period of well-deserved digestion is underway for the broader asset class.

But this doesn’t mean there won’t be fresh up-legs taking place in some individual contracts.

As this new secular bull market matures, pockets of strength will rotate across the space. Our only job is to find the emerging leadership.

Today, energy and base metals are correcting after explosive rallies while strength emerges from the agricultural complex -- especially grains.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market-cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth 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.

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

Earlier in the month, we pointed out breadth deterioration in the US dollar.

While the dollar pressed to new highs against the yen, the pound, and the euro, it struggled to gain ground against commodity-centric and emerging market currencies.

The lack of broad strength had us questioning the validity of the recent rally in the US Dollar Index $DXY. 

That’s changed recently.

Today, the dollar index is catching to new highs against a backdrop of broadening strength, not weakness. Now that we’re seeing dollar internals flip and start to confirm these new highs from the index, this is not a trend we want to fight.

And, to be clear, we haven’t been. 

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.

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 the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny.

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.