From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

For the first time in my career, I'm buying bonds.

It has less to do with positioning defensively and more to do with making a call on lower interest rates.

But what it really comes down to, more than anything, is the chart pattern.

Bond funds are completing bearish-to-bullish reversals for the first time in years. 

This is the same exact pattern we've gone back to time and again this cycle... and every cycle, really.

Rounding bottoms are some of the most reliable patterns we have as technicians.

And we're seeing them across the board in bond funds right now.

Let's dive in and talk about some of them.

Here's the US Aggregate Bond ETF $AGG: 

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to this one, it couldn't be any simpler!

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

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.

The question we're asking ourselves today is a big one.

Is the US Dollar breaking down from a multi-year consolidation?

With the dollar rangebound all year, we haven’t experienced a trending currency market. 

When the dollar is trending higher or lower, we have a good idea of the impact it is likely to have on other markets.

However, when it is trendless, the dollar is neither a headwind nor a tailwind for risk assets.

We think that could be changing.

Here's a weekly line chart showing the U.S. Dollar Index making new year-to-date lows:

As you can see, the US dollar bears have taken control and resolved this multi-year consolidation to the downside.

Here's another way to look at it.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended August 16, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

It’s good to be a gold bug.

New all-time highs and fresh breakouts are dotting the charts. Buy signals are flashing left and right. And even the laggards – Palladium and Platinum – are refusing to break down. 

Best of all, Gold has a one-track mind: up and to the right!

This is the video recording of the August 2024 Mid-month Conference Call.

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The price action from commodities has been lackluster, at best, this year. Our equal-weight commodity index is at its lowest level since early 2021.

Despite the broad weakness, gold continues to shine. The 79th element closed this week at its highest price in history.

Here’s a look at gold futures, trading at our first objective measured from the multi-decade base that resolved higher back in Q1:

As long as this breakout sticks, the bias remains higher for the yellow metal. 

On a more tactical note, gold has just completed a multi-month continuation pattern and is in the early stages of a fresh leg up:

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US Dollar Index $DXY is finishing the day relatively unchanged.

Today’s much anticipated CPI print failed to move the needle for the greenback.

On the flip side, $DXY’s most significant component – the euro – is ripping toward a new year-to-date high.

Check out the EUR/USD pair completing a seven-month bullish reversal pattern, retesting its January high:

The path of least resistance now leads higher.

I like buying the euro against the 1.0958 breakout level, targeting 1.1250. But I'm out if the EUR/USD slips into its prior range.

A pop in the euro tends to weaken DXY since it makes up 56.7% of the index, acting as a bullish catalyst for stocks. 

Yet the dollar continues to hold above last Monday’s low.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

In this scan, we look to identify 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.