This is the video recording of the May 19th Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche.

05/19/22 2:00 PM ET

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

“It isn’t even a bear market yet.” 

I heard that from someone earlier this week. I also read it somewhere else earlier today. 

I know what they mean, but the comment left me shaking my head anyway. 

Many are reluctant to call a bear a bear until the pullback exceeds 20%. I wrote about the shortcomings with this approach a few weeks ago. But old habits die hard. For now, with the S&P 500 down “only” 18% from its January peak, this current period is still being labeled a correction.

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Following the collapse of Luna's stablecoin, TerraUSD $UST, it's called into question the validity of its counterparts.

Tether $USDT and USD Coin $USDC have experienced notable volatility since this event.

We recommend you read Glassnode's latest report 'Unstable Coins' -- it's a great primer on what's happening.

But when it comes to down to the question "is Tether safe?", the consensus can get awfully confusing. Tether FUD has always been present, but it particularly ramped up in response to an anonymous post published on Medium, "The Bit Short: Inside Crypto’s Doomsday Machine". In fact, this piece was so significant that Bitcoin sold off over 10% in day following its release.

As technical analysts, we often like to stay in our lane and keep it simple. But given this topic is hot property right now, we thought we'd share something that...

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by the media holding company National Amusements, which reported a $20 million purchase of Paramount Global $PARA.

National Amusements now owns over 32 million shares of PARA, which represents an ownership stake of about 5%.

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.

We'll publish this...

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

The level of transparency in Bitcoin and crypto as an asset class allow us to gain deep and actionable insights that aren't possible in traditional markets.

As we begin incorporating more of this high-level, sophisticated data as a supplement to our technical analysis, it often allows us to express greater conviction when the setups emerge.

In what's become common in our weekly letters we publish on Monday, a good portion of our crypto macro thesis is being driven by the signals we're seeing on-chain.

Whether we're whale watching, analyzing HODLers, looking at coin maturation, studying spending habits, measuring profitability, or using a wide number of other metrics, we're learning a ton of valuable information we'd kill for in traditional markets.

As any good technician, when it comes to equities, we take a lot of data sets with a grain of salt. Often, the CEO, management, or the auditors themselves are lying or simply overlooking important details.

It's why we have to manually pour through thousands of datasets in our internal scans to get the cleanest, most reliable data to...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: The disconnect between what investors say and what they do continues to be overlooked by sentiment indicator tourists. While consumer sentiment (what they say) is near its lowest levels on record, household equity exposure (what they are doing) remains elevated. Moreover, many are trying to call peak pessimism (with no evidence that it has reversed) as a catalyst for a market bottom (with no evidence that the conditions for a sustainable rally are in place). Sentiment is a condition and that condition right now shows fear and concern continuing to build. Being contrary to a crowd that has not turned can lead to getting trampled.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Learn Volumes By Looking Beneath The Surface

We balance how investors say they feel with how they act. We can do the same with the market, balancing surface-level price action against what we see when we dig beneath the surface. This seems all the more important amid the crescendo in calls that the market has...

Below 4100 in the S&P500 is a problem. Those are the February lows.

By definition, the stock market is in a downtrend, making lower lows along with those lower highs that were already in place.

We can go much lower from here, a little lower from here or sideways for while.

It doesn't make sense to own stocks in any of those 3 scenarios:

The team at All Star Charts lately has been talking about how a lot of stocks are displaying declining moving averages and share prices continue to trade below these downward-sloping moving averages. There is nothing bullish about that.

What it means is there is likely an avalanche of overhead supply in most areas of the stock market right now and therefore many rallies will be met with more and more people trying to unload their positions. This is a tough environment to be a bull in.

There is always money to be made in bear markets, but it requires a different skillset, steel nerves, and quick decisions. And whereas in bull markets, we love to put on bullish positions that have 6-9 months to play out so that we can let the underlying trends grind their way higher, in bear markets we like to take more shorter-termed positions because we need to take profits quicker. Bear market rallies are notorious for stopping out even the best of short positions.

With all this in mind, today's trade is in one of those names that have been in a persistent downtrend, and is trading below significant moving averages.

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