From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Gold looks like it’s ready to run.
The largest gold miner in the world, Newmont Mining Corp. $NEM, has broken out of a multi-year base.
Silver and platinum have dug in at critical support levels and are catching higher.
And, most importantly, gold is in the process of reclaiming its former all-time highs from summer 2020.
These are all bullish developments, suggesting gold -- and precious metals more broadly -- are ready to join in on the party that most commodities have been enjoying for more than a year.
Last month, gold broke above its former 2011 highs near 1,924. Here’s a zoomed-out view of the chart:
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.
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.
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 Monday March 21st 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.
High Beta vs. Low Volatility, Copper vs. Gold, and our custom Risk-On vs. Risk-Off ratio have all gone nowhere since the beginning of 2021.
The Australian dollar/Japanese yen also falls into the range-bound category, as the risk-on pair looks a lot like the ratios we just mentioned.
But AUD/JPY has been showing resilience the past few weeks and is currently challenging the upper bounds of its multi-month range.
Since most risk appetite indicators aren’t giving us much in the form of new information these days, an upside resolution from AUD/JPY would be a major development.
It hasn’t happened yet, but things are certainly setting up that way.
In today’s post, we’ll dive into one of our favorite risk-on/risk-off gauges – the AUD/JPY cross - and discuss what it’s currently suggesting about risk-seeking behavior.
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 $1B 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 $1B and $4B.
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.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Commodities have been on a tear, with the Bloomberg Commodity Index recently posting its best week since 1970 and the CRB Index rallying more than 25% year to date.
Despite the broad strength from commodities, Dr. Copper – a key economic barometer – has yet to break out like so many of its peers.
After making a new all-time high last Friday, buyers were unable to sustain the move, and price retreated into its former range.
While it’s great to see so many other contracts trending higher, bulls really need to see copper join the mix. If this is truly a new commodity supercycle, it better break out from this consolidation.
It is that important to the overall asset class.
Let’s break down the various technical scenarios for copper’s recent move and discuss what they mean for the entire space.
First, the move could have been a premature breakout:
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.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
Sideways has been the theme for most risk assets since they peaked in the first half of last year. Markets have become increasingly messy in the time since.
If we’re talking about US equities, the market is as bifurcated as it’s been in years.
All we mean by this is that depending on what group a stock is in, it could be in a nice uptrend, but it could also be in an ugly downtrend. Stocks and other risk assets are literally moving in opposite directions these days, and doing so with some serious momentum.
At the index level, you can see this split market reflected by trendless ranges.
When we look to our risk-appetite ratios and indicators for information, we’re not getting much as the vast majority are still stuck in the same ranges they’ve been in for the better part of 12-months.
So, risk assets are a mess and most of our risk indicators are also a mess. Makes sense, right?
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.