From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Not only are commodities losing their leaders, but the leaders are losing their former 2018 highs.

Heating oil futures just posted their lowest level since February. Meanwhile, gasoline and crude have printed fresh year-to-date lows, taking out their prior cycle highs.

Now what? 

Should we expect broad selling pressure to hit the commodity space?

Not so fast…

If you believe impending weakness awaits commodities in the coming weeks and months, this chart is for you: our energy index overlaid with our broad commodity index (both equal-weight):

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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

Bonds are flying under the radar.

While everyone focuses on the S&P 500 finding resistance at its 200-day moving average, bonds are posting their most substantial rally since the early 2020 peak.

Treasuries have represented downside risk for almost two years. We get it. Nobody's wanted bonds!

Neither have we – until now.

Here’s why…

Momentum

The long-term Treasury bond ETF $TLT has gained almost 20% since late October. In the process, it registered its largest four-week rate of change in a decade (aside from the covid related volatility).

This is what a momentum thrust looks like:

Notice the previous rallies in mid-2021 and earlier this summer (highlighted in yellow).

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US dollar Index $DXY is running into support at a shelf of former highs. 

How it reacts will influence how stocks fare heading into the year-end.

Let’s check out three charts and three levels to monitor.

This is the video recording of our December 5th Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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.

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, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

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 and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals shine as the dollar drops.

It makes sense our bullish metal trades are working in this environment. But how are less dollar-sensitive contracts faring?

Let’s check back on two recent trades from October, coffee and orange juice.

First up is the orange juice futures contract:

OJ came within striking distance of our upside objective last month.

It’s now carving out a near-term top while posting a bearish momentum divergence – not the most bullish price action.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As our Premium Members already know, we have a laundry list of scans that we run internally on an almost daily basis.

Different market environments, naturally, are more conducive to certain scans and less so to others.

We think our “Freshly Squeezed” scan is perfect for the current market. With so many individual issues in massive drawdowns as the broader market begins to turn a corner, there are going to be some serious short-covering rallies in some of the most beaten-down names.

In fact, it’s already starting to happen. Infamous meme stock, AMC Entertainment $AMC was up 25% at its highs today (not on a closing basis).

Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with heavy short positions. When a stock is heavily shorted, it means there are natural incremental buyers. Bulls need incremental buyers, as this is the only way price can move higher. When shorts are proven wrong, they have to buy their shares back to close out their position.