From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended September 11, 2020.

What we do 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.

Whether we're measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers... there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin the cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.

These are the registration details for the live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Tuesday September 15th 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.

Here are the details for Tuesday:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we're watching in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

Last week, we followed up on some of the charts we recently cautioned were approaching overhead supply to see how they reacted to these critical levels.

Since we experienced a bit of a selloff on Thursday and Friday, this week we’re going to keep it simple and take a high-level look at some of the most important assets in the world and assess any damage that was endured...

...Spoiler alert: there wasn't much.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood."

What we do is analyze the most popular stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We are using a variety of new 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.

Whether we're measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers... there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin the cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.

What's the bear case for equities if Financials start to outperform for the first time in, what feels like, forever?

A funny thing happened this week. The Nasdaq, as well as some of the major Large-Cap US Indexes, were under pressure for a couple of days. But did you realize which which sector was the best performer during that selling?

Financials.

Wait, what? Relative strength in Financials?

Looking at this a little deeper, if Financials were ever going to start to outperform, this would be a perfectly logical place for that to start. In fact, this is exactly where they started to outperform after the Financial crisis:

Click on Charts to Zoom In

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Energy stocks and Crude Oil have been trending in opposite directions over the trailing three months.

We know these kinds of intermarket relationships can dislocate for extended periods of time, but some recent developments in the space have us thinking it may be time for this divergence to correct itself... and it's likely to come in the form of Crude catching down as opposed to stocks catching up.

In this post, we'll reveal this week's Mystery Chart and discuss what the recent action in Oil could mean for Energy stocks in the weeks/months ahead.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we're watching in order to profit in the current market environment.

Last week, we highlighted a number of critical Stock Market Indexes and Sectors, as well as assets in the FICC Markets that were approaching logical levels of overhead supply.

This week, we're going to follow up on this theme and see how some of these charts have reacted to the critical levels we pointed out last week.

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 Wednesday September 2nd @ 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 Wednesday:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood."

What we do is analyze the most popular stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We are using a variety of new sources to generate the list of most popular names, which we'll explain more each week as we add new data sets. 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.

Last week, we added some stocks from a list of large institutional purchases we track, and this week we've added some names that experienced unusual options activity.

As we continue to include new sources, the number of potential trade opportunities we can choose from increases and gives us a larger universe of favorable setups to take advantage of.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on this week's Mystery Chart. We had a lot of good answers this week. Many respondents were cautious of the waning momentum but on balance, most of you were buyers. We are too.

It was a chart of the iShares MSCI Netherlands ETF $EWN which just broke out of a 13-year base to fresh all-time highs (shown below).

But it's not just the Netherlands making new record highs, the All-Country World Index $ACWI just made new all-time highs as well. There aren't many things more bullish than World Equity Indexes trading at their highest levels in history.

In this post, we'll highlight the positive breadth characteristics we're seeing within Global Equity Markets and outline trade setups in some of the strongest countries around the world- including the Netherlands, as a way to express our bullish thesis.

But first, here's why we're so bullish on International Equities in the first place. Check out these new highs for ACWI.

Don't Fight Papa Dow

That's how I learned it. You'll hear my friend Ralph Acampora say that all the time!

"You Never Want To Fight Papa Dow"

My interpretation is that there is wisdom in the Dow Components. If you want to know which way the market is headed, focus on those 30 stocks.

I'm not going to get into the discussion about whether the Dow is the best index or not. I've made my case before and stand by it today more than ever. If you have a problem with Dow Jones or Standard & Poors, stop complaining about it and just go build a better index. It's not that hard. We do it every day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, however, is a perfectly good index and gauge of stock market strength or weakness. One of the best parts is that there are only 30 components!

Hellooo??? Do you want to go through 500 stocks? Or 3000 in the case of the Russell3000?

Or just 30?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we're watching in order to profit in the current market environment.

This week, we're going to highlight a number of critical Stock Market Indexes and Sectors, as well as assets in the FICC Markets that are approaching logical levels of overhead supply and pose the question... "Are risk assets due for some corrective action or consolidation?"