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:

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

It’s only six weeks into the new year and we’re already getting a sense that commodities could very well outperform just as they did in 2021.

Evidence supporting our commodity supercycle thesis continues to mount each day, as participation across the commodity space expands.

Crude oil is breaking above 90. Base metals like aluminum and tin are hitting new all-time highs. And the rally in grains is getting back on track.

All these things suggest that last year's bull run wasn’t a simple “one and done” event.

One key difference between last year and today is strength among commodities is starting to spill over into commodity-related equities.

This is a critical development that supports our bullish thesis. 

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

The middle of the curve is catching higher as the US 10-year Treasury yield pushes toward its next milestone at 2.00%.

Now that we’re starting to see some follow-through to the upside, it raises the question…

Are these new highs in the 10-year sustainable?

With inflation expectations just off their highs, short-term rates surging in the US, and yields ripping higher across the globe, we think the answer is a resounding yes! 

A few weeks ago, we discussed how global yields -- particularly those in developed Europe -- were confirming the new highs for US yields.

Since then, we've only seen this trend accelerate. With central banks turning increasingly hawkish, rates continue to break out to new highs around the world.

Today, we're going to dive further into this theme by taking a look at a handful of benchmark rates outside the US. 

Let’s dive in!

First up is the German 10-year:

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.

But, now, we’re also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

In April 2020, crude oil traded below zero and marked the perfect capitulation event for a number of trends.

Around the very same time, both commodities and stocks bottomed and kicked off major rallies.

Until recently, commodities had underperformed stocks for about a decade. To make matters worse, they were moving lower on an absolute basis for most of that time as well. 

Not only have commodities started to trend higher on an absolute basis again. They're also undergoing a reversal in their relative trend with stocks and other alternatives.

We’ve been clear about our bullish position as we’ve discussed the potential for a new commodity supercycle for over a year. 

Now, we want to take that thesis one step further as the evidence is building in favor of commodities experiencing a sustained period of outperformance relative to stocks.

To best take advantage of this trend, we want to be overweight commodities and commodity-related stocks.

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

The US dollar can’t catch a bid.

Since briefly reclaiming its November highs last month, it’s been nothing but down and to the right for the US Dollar Index $DXY.

Many global currencies have reacted by catching higher – especially the euro. But commodity-centric currencies – like the Canadian and Australian dollars – have had a more muted reaction. We think that’s likely to change in the coming weeks and months.

With interest rates on the rise around the world and crude oil prices pushing above 90, we think it’s just a matter of time before we begin to see some real strength from these currencies – especially if we see a sustained downtrend in the USD.

Today we’re going to highlight one of these forex pairs, as we think it’s poised for a major move. Let’s talk about the USD/CAD.

Here’s a weekly chart of the USD/CAD cross:

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.

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 February 4, 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 seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For most of my career, I've listened to fundamental analysts make the argument that investors should be overweight international stocks because they're "cheaper" than US stocks.

This has been the case for a long time now, and it's merely a function of the fact that there are far more value and cyclical stocks overseas.

But, since value stocks have been out of favor for so long, ex-US stocks have severely underperformed domestic markets.

Growth has been the place to be for the last decade, and for this reason the alpha has been with the tech-heavy US stock market over its global peers.

But now that we're seeing the tide shift in favor of value, we're also seeing early signs of reversals in the US versus the world relative trends.

There's still more work to be done before we have conviction that we want to favor international stocks, but the weight of the evidence continues to move in that direction.

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

Commodities are on fire!

Crude oil is trading above 90, its derivatives are printing fresh highs, and natural gas is beginning to rip – again.

But, as we’ve pointed out in recent posts, it’s not just energy that’s working. We’re seeing broad strength in commodity markets.

Soybean oil is marching higher along with the rest of the bean complex, and corn hit our initial upside objective earlier this week. 

Today, we’re going to outline another ag contract that’s setting up for its next leg higher: coffee.

Here’s a zoomed-out daily continuation chart of Coffee Futures $KCF:

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: