Wow what a week to be an investor in stocks.

The broadening of participation all over the world continues. 

Meanwhile, the pessimism is stronger than ever.

I'm noticing the most angry of people are the ones who want stocks to fall because they don't like the Trump and all his buddies. 

But their anger is not the market's concern. If anything, it's just more fuel to drive stocks much higher, which would enrage them even more. 

It's pretty hilarious to watch actually.

Laughing is good for you. But laughing at people who haven't bothered to count and actually see how well stocks are doing, is all the more amusing.

You know, you can dislike Trump, and still recognize how strong this bull market continues to be, and how much stronger it's getting week over week.

Here is one of the most important stock market indexes in the world. I would argue that after the S&P500, Dow and Nasdaq, this one is right there behind it, and arguably right along there with it in the same category of importance.

EFA represents developed markets outside of North America. So think a ton of European stocks, United Kingdom, Japan and...

Today I'm going to share a little trick that I like to use to help put the current market volatility into perspective.

The math is like this. I take the value of the VIX and divide by 16. And that's what the market is pricing in for a normal daily move.

For example, if the VIX is at 24, then I would expect a 1.5% move in the S&P500 each day.

So if the VIX is at 16, then I would expect a 1% move.

If the VIX is at 32, then I would expect a 2% move.

Simple.

Now, many people wonder why it's 16, and that's where we get way above my paygrade. If you don't understand how the math around options works, don't worry. No one else does either.

I'm not even joking. Options math is next level impossible. Just ask any of the best options traders. They'll be the first to tell you.

The 16 number I believe has something to do with the square root of the number of trading days in a year, but I'm confident there's more to it than that.

Also, for you statistics majors, I believe there is technically like a 67% probability of these results, or something along those lines.

So keep in mind that The Rule of 16 is just a back of...

Stock market bulls have been watching the homies like hawks. 

It's a vital industry right now.

Alfonso recently wrote about the Home Construction ETF $ITB breaking to new lows relative to its defensive peer group, the Real Estate ETF $IYR.

He said, "This ratio has historically been a leading indicator for the broader market. During prior cycles, you can see clear divergences where ITB/IYR tops or bottoms ahead of major turns in the S&P 500." 

See the chart for yourself. The data doesn't lie. 

If the equity bull market in the United States is going to continue, this group cannot complete a massive top.

Here's the setup that everyone is watching 👇

As you can see, the iShares U.S. Home Construction Index $ITB has carved out a prolonged potential distribution pattern. 

The index...

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. 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:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we...

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.

The bottom line is it is a bull market. We...

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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

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.

...

Last night might have been the most important LIVE Conference Call we've ever had.

Traders and Investors have so many questions right now about the coming months and quarters that we had so much to talk about.

We went over all the most important trends in the market today, what our favorite setups are from the long side, what the new downside risks look like, and my one favorite place to put money to work RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW.

Click here and register to get full access to last night's LIVE Video Conference Call.

You'll be able to pause, rewind and fast forward. And the slide deck with over 160 charts is also available to download right away.

Watch the Replay and get the Trade Ideas...

This precious metals bull market will turn 1 year old on Tuesday.

Can you believe it? 

Gold futures resolved a multi-decade basing pattern on March 4th, 2024.

We've had a blast riding the shiny yellow metal higher and made a ton of money along the way.

The cycle has had its ups and downs, no doubt about it.

But when we zoom out and analyze the long-term trends, it's clear what environment we're in. A raging bull market!

Buyers are being rewarded, and sellers are being penalized. This is what happens in uptrends.

Let's take a moment to step back and assess our progress over the last year.

I came down with a pretty bad cold this weekend. Most of my Sunday was spent quarantined in my office so I wouldn't get my kids sick (4yr old and twin 2yr olds).

Of course, rather than laying in bed resting, I was in my office looking through charts.

I couldn't help myself.

It's my way of relaxing. And as it turns out, I do feel a lot better today than I did when I woke up yesterday.

But one thing I was able to do was go one by one counting stocks, sectors and indexes all over the world to see if these ugly rumors about weakening market breadth were true.

As it turns out, they're just lies. 

Market breadth continues to expand as more and more countries around the world are hitting new highs, not fewer.

We already discussed how Earth is Hitting New All-time highs. 

But if you go one by...

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 January 3, 2025. 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.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers, there’s...