From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Chop, chop, chop…

Yields on sovereign debt are chopping sideways across the globe.

The US, France, Germany, Spain, and UK benchmark rates are well below their respective 2023 peaks.

But in Japan, the JGB 10-year yield is hitting its highest level in over a decade. 

Check out the Japan benchmark rate cruising above 100 basis points: 

Earlier in the week, the Japan 10-year yield reached 1.10 for the first time since July 2011. 

While the Bank of Canada, the Swiss National Bank, and the European Central Bank began cutting rates this year, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) may hike later this month. 

You can blame it on a plummeting yen or the BoJ’s Yield Curve Control policies. 

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As most of you know, we use 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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

The smart money is snatching up Canadian dollars.

Last month, commercial hedgers extended their Canadian dollar exposure to their largest net-long historical position.

While positioning represents a condition – not a signal – we can only view the hedger's appetite for the loonie in one light…

Bullish!

Notice that extended commercial long positioning (the bright blue line in the lower pane) coincides with critical inflection points:

These market turns preceded extensive rallies in 2016, 2017, and 2020.

Before boarding the loonie’s next rip-roaring rally, price must provide a well-defined entry with a favorable risk-to-reward profile.

But the past two years of sideways action look more like a topping or bearish continuation pattern, not a bullish reversal:

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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.

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.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Investors are becoming restless.

Silver is dancing around a significant breakout level. And gold continues its sideways chop for the third straight month.

It’s certainly been a challenging time to hold precious metals trades – even for the most patient investors.

To kick off the third quarter, let’s utilize fresh monthly data to step back and review the primary trends for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.

Investors are becoming restless.

Silver is dancing around a significant breakout level. And Gold continues its sideways chop for the third straight month.

It’s certainly been a challenging time to hold precious metals trades – even for the most patient investors.

To kick off the third quarter,  let’s utilize fresh monthly data to step back and review the primary trends for Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium.

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

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 $3T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Arista Networks and Crowdstrike.

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. Click here to check it out.

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

Our cotton and sugar trades are working. Coffee is raring to go.

And crude oil is pushing toward a solid first-half finish.

Beyond that, commodities are dribbling lower.

Let’s review an energy contract that broke out two months ago and has never looked back—Natty Gas!

Natural gas futures are carving out an eighteen-month base below last year’s high:

I outlined our bullish outlook in late April. Natty Gas ripped the following week, rallying more than a dollar in just six weeks.

Now, price is consolidating within a twenty-percent range (potential right shoulder):

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

While the market remains a mixed bag and participation is lacking, we're still seeing evidence of risk appetite.

How do we know?

The stocks that investors are betting against the most are making big moves... to the upside.

And we know just what to do in these environments.

We find the most heavily shorted stocks in our freshly squeezed universe. We wait for momentum to come into these names, and then we ride them higher with the squeeze.

We got new short data recently, so let's talk about how we're playing it.

Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with the most aggressive short positions. When a stock is shorted, it means incremental buyers are waiting in the wings to close out their bearish bets.

We love this, as new buyers are the one true catalyst for higher prices.

When shorts are proven wrong, they become buyers of the stock. In many cases, this happens as momentum flows into these names and fuels massive short-covering rallies.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Our cotton and sugar trades are working. Coffee is raring to go.

And crude oil is pushing toward a solid first-half finish.

Beyond that, commodities are dribbling lower.

Let’s review an energy contract that broke out two months ago and has never looked back—Natty Gas!