The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

Yesterday, we framed this market action in a rather dramatic tone, arguing that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are staring into the abyss.

With Bitcoin testing its year-to-date lows, there's little in the way preventing crypto assets from experiencing yet another significant leg down in the penultimate stages of this year.

So, alongside the commentary in yesterday's letter, we want to approach this market from two angles and let money flow dictate our execution.

Let's dive in.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by the CEO of Ivanhoe Electric Inc $IE, who reported a purchase worth roughly $3.3 million.

The only 13G on our list today was filed by Boxer Capital, LLC. The investment firm revealed an initial 5.70% ownership stake in SpringWorks Therapeutics $SWTX.

The stock we're looking at this week is part of the Automobile sector.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to move in...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under The Hood columne, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 16, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

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.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

New Lows for Big Tech

When it comes to the most important stocks, it’s all about tech. Mega cap technology companies dominate the US indexes and are in just about everyone's portfolio. The chart below illustrates just how paramount their performance is for the broader market. We have overlaid the relative trend between technology stocks and the S&P 500 with the Nasdaq 100 on absolute terms.

While the chart shows less than a year of data, the correlation between the two is consistently strong throughout all of history. This makes perfect sense as technology stocks represent roughly half of the weighting in the Nasdaq. Not only did we see new lows in a growing number of large cap tech stocks last week, but the group also made new 52-week relative lows at the index level. This kind of relative weakness tells us we should expect further downside for the market’s largest stocks. If that’s the case, the major...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was negative, as 89% of our list closed lower with a median return of -2.90%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the winner, closing with a 15.40% gain.
• The biggest loser was Dow Jones Transports $DJT, with a weekly loss of -8.79%.
• There was a 3% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 11% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs....

Key Takeaway:

• Thrust but verify.
• Fed up with higher rates.
• Worst six month stretch ever has investors in an exceedingly bad mood.

The June index-level lows are holding for now, but the response to the breadth and momentum thrusts that accompanied the summer rally has been somewhere between uninspiring and historically bad. On the one hand, the S&P 500 was essentially flat in the month following July 28 breadth thrust signal based on a surge in the percentage of stocks making new 20-day highs and even now is not outside the range of what has been seen in the past. The mid-August signal based on surging 40-day momentum, however, has been followed by unprecedented weakness.

These thrusts typically are evidence that conditions are improving and a sustainable rally is at hand. But that is usually verified by longer-term trends turning higher and consistently seeing more stocks make new highs than new lows...

Great weekend of Charts and Football for me!

How about you?

More Charts than Football? Or the other way around?

I definitely got a healthy dose of both.

And this one for me definitely stands out.

The way I learned it from Ralph Acampora many years ago was, "DON'T FIGHT PAPA DOW"

So here's the Papa Dow he was referring to. I included the key levels we've been focused on since the 2018 correction. They've really helped and I think they continue to.

But for today, let's focus on the fact that prices are both below overhead supply and above support from the summer lows.

From any sort of intermediate-term...

I know this might be breaking news to some of you, but there are often great opportunities to be had in international stocks. And the All Star Charts International Hall of Famers report regularly serves up the best setups out there.

Today's trade comes directly from the most recent report, so let's board the airplane and head abroad!