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 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

The path of least resistance is higher for yields, as the market continues to punish investors for buying bonds. 

As long as that’s the case, we want to look for short opportunities when approaching the bond market.

Since the shorter end of the curve has ripped higher, the moves in these contracts and ETFs are extended. They simply don't offer favorable risk/reward trade setups at current levels.

We’re better off looking for ways to play rising yields further out on the curve in this environment. 

We’re going to discuss how to do just that by covering a few charts that are setting up on the short side.

First up is the 30-year Treasury bond futures:

T-bonds are carving out a multi-year head-and-shoulders top above their pivot lows from last March.

This is the video recording of our February 1st Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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

Commodities and cyclical assets have remained resilient, defying headwinds from the US dollar for nearly a year. 

But the US Dollar Index $DXY is sliding lower as evidence mounts in favor of further weakness…

Could those headwinds soon fade away?

Today, we’re going to highlight some critical developments and discuss what they mean for the US dollar, stocks, and commodities in the weeks and months ahead.

Let’s dive in!

First is a chart of the US Dollar Index $DXY:

Its inability to hold above the November 2021 highs screams "failed breakout!"

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 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…

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:

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 February 1st @ 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

If you’re searching for strength, look no further than commodities!

With risk assets coming under increasing pressure, the strength from commodities and commodity-related stocks stands out that much more. Except for rates, it’s the only thing the bulls have left.

When we look beneath the surface, so far, the story centers around energy – whether we’re talking about crude oil printing fresh seven-year highs or Chevron Corp. $CVX breaking out of a multi-year base to new all-time highs.

Energy is -- and has been --  re-asserting itself as the next dominant leadership group. 

But unlike the stock market -- where energy is the only group working -- we’re seeing broad participation within the commodities market.

In fact, there are still plenty of pockets of strength we want to be buying.

Today, we’re going to highlight one of those areas by outlining a trade setup in soybean oil.

Let’s dive in!

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  

The Federal Reserve is doing its best to prepare the market for what is expected to be a year of rate hikes. But investors aren’t exactly enthusiastic about this outlook, as stocks came under further pressure following Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee announcement.

The bond market is also offering some valuable information again. And considering the recent volatility, it’s more important than ever to listen closely.

When we think about bonds, credit spreads are always top of mind, as they’re a great barometer of market health. When there's stress on risk assets, it shows up in credit spreads. 

When analyzing credit spreads, all we’re doing is measuring the difference in yield between a Treasury (the safest bet) and a corporate bond (riskier asset) of the same maturity. If these spreads begin to widen, it’s usually problematic for equities.