From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

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-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let's dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

JC asked me how far I thought interest rates would pull back during a recent internal meeting.

The question caught me off guard since I trade bonds, not interest rates. I know my bond trade targets off the top of my head, but not the corresponding rate levels. 

As soon as the call ended, I applied Fibonacci analysis to the 30- and 10-year yields…

The 3.50 level marks a logical area for the 30-year yield to stop falling.

That level coincides with a shelf of former lows and a critical retracement level covering the rally off the 2020 low.

The similar level for the 10-year yield stands at 3.25:

[Programming note: There will be no trades and no daily digest tomorrow, Friday December 29th. I'll be traveling. Happy New Year!]

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. New position today in GLD.
2. No defensive adjustments today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

This is a notoriously slow week for the market, and our insider filings and options flow scans reflect it.

We only have a single Form 4 today, and it comes from Yakira Capital Management Inc.

The investment firm revealed a purchase of $130,899 in Seritage Growth Properties $SRG.

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 Tuesday January 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 Tuesday evening:

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.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Y’all know the drill… 

Dollar down, stocks up.

That dominant inverse relationship remains firm as stocks rip and the dollar dips. 

The market’s message is clear: Buy stocks, sell dollars.

If you trade the FX markets, I have two new setups to ride the falling dollar…

First up, the US dollar-Swiss franc pair USD/CHF:

I’ve been tracking a generational topping formation in the USD/CHF (bottoming formation in the Swiss franc futures) for most of this year.

It wanted to break down in July but lacked follow-through.

Today, the USD/CHF is printing fresh 8-year lows, flashing another sell signal.

Today's trade is in a name that has caught the fancy of aggressive short-sellers. As of the latest update, approximately 25% of the outstanding shares in Chewy Inc $CHWY are held in short positions.

Now, I'm sure the short-sellers have done their homework and have very compelling reasons to be short. I will concede their points to them.

However, short-sellers are human too. And being human means they can also be wrong. And if they are wrong, the only way they can make the losses stop is to buy stock to cover their short positions. If 25% of the float has to cover their shorts, that sets up the possibility of a wildfire to the upside.

We're here for that possibility.

Check out this chart:

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. No new position today.
2. Defensive adjustment in IWM.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by the CEO of HighPeak Energy Inc $HPK, Jack Hightower.

Hightower reported the acquisition of 150,442 HPK shares, equivalent to roughly $2.1 million.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended December 22, 2023. 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 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.