This week we’re looking at a long setup in the sugar stock, which remained resilient in market drawdown.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 21, 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.

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.

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:

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.

Bears Take Control

There you go.

I wrote that headline to save you the trouble of turning on your TV or following your favorite fear mongerer online. You're welcome.

Unless you've been lost in the wilderness for the last two weeks (not a bad place to have been, btw), then you no doubt know the bulls are currently in trouble.

The fake-out breakout in the Russell 2000 $IWM has turned into a full-blown route, the S&P 500 is testing levels last seen at the end of September and early October, and $VIX has printed the highest levels of the year. There's not a lot to be optimistic about right now -- especially if you're holding a bunch of long positions that are at or near stop-out levels like I am.

I got stopped out of a bunch of positions last week, two today (a long call spread in $STX and a short strangle in $XLK), and a couple more might get exited tomorrow if things don't stabilize here.

Into this maelstrom, we've been dialing back putting on new positions. During last week's holiday-shortened trading week, we only put one new position on -- and that may have been one too many ;)

Every bear market has a culprit.

There's always that one sector or group of stocks that drags the rest of them down.

In 2007, for example, it was Financials and Homebuilders. In 2000, of course, it was Tech and Growth.

This time around, it's been Small-cap Growth, and overall underperformance from Growth in general.

But these 4 are the ones we've been pointing to as good representations of this cycle's culprit, or potential culprit anyway. You never actually know until afterwards.

Since stocks peaked last February, the evidence has been pretty clear that these are the ones that paint the best picture of what's been going on over the past year:

Over the last two weeks, we've outlined how we've been patient in buying dips.

Given the lack of demand observed on-chain combined with the growing macro uncertainty, the dip back to the low 40,000s appeared to be a low-conviction buy.

Since publication of those two notes, Bitcoin's subsequently lost a critical level of support and now hangs in a no man's land.

The same themes we've discussed over the last two weeks remain intact, so this report will serve as an interim update.

This is probably as good of a time as ever to get back to basics.

Let's try to remember what this is all about.

What the hell are we doing here anyway?

I won't speak on your behalf, but I'll tell you the way I look at it.

The reason Technical Analysis works is because we're identifying trends.

And Prices trend.

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.

I get to talk to traders and investors of all shapes and sizes every day of my life. This is something I like to do for fun, and it's also a great way to learn. But remember, I do this for a living. So not a day goes by where I'm not talking to market participants.

This has gone on for decades now. Everyone from the largest banks and hedge funds on the planet to recent grads first learning how to trade.

I have a lot of conversations with these investors. And one common theme I've heard over the past few months is just how difficult of an environment this currently is.

A lot of traders are getting chopped up in this mess of a market. And it's not anything new, it's been messy for quite some time.

So you're not alone in this.

Please don't think you are.