In markets, there are certain groups we want to completely avoid.

Permabears, gold bugs, and the "doom and gloomers" are great examples of what not to be.

These are people who project their political and philosophical views onto the market rather than using the market as a way to make money.

When we're dealing with cryptocurrencies, deciding who we listen to is incredibly important. Cults like the laser eye people, religious followings of altcoins, and of course, the dreaded Bitcoin maxi are all in the business of fueling their internal confirmation biases.

For those unfamiliar with the nomenclature, Bitcoin maximalists believe that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that matters, while everything else is worthless. Similar to the gold and silver crowd, these people will only buy Bitcoin and nothing else.

I find it hilarious that Maxi's will criticize those in traditional markets for missing out on alpha, but they won't buy a single altcoin, which is ironic because Bitcoin's share of the asset class has dwindled lower and lower over the years.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

We held our October Monthly Strategy Session last night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month. 

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

The US dollar marches to the beat of its own drum.

Interest rates are rising across the curve, sparking strength out of economically sensitive areas within stocks and commodities.

Crude oil and the energy-heavy CRB Index are breaking to new six-year highs and the energy sector SPDR is testing a crucial area of former support turned resistance -- all while the US Dollar Index is catching a bid. 

It’s not every day we see the dollar and commodities rally in tandem.

This environment suggests the dollar should be rolling over or chopping sideways at best. Yet it continues to show strength!

When markets don’t do "what they should,” that’s valuable information. And in this case, it raises some important questions.

How often does the historically inverse correlation between the dollar and commodities decouple? 

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

My favorite Head & Shoulders Patterns are the ones that aren't that at all.

Markets trend. We know that for a fact. That's why Technical Analysis works. Because as Technicians, we're identifying primary trends.

And since we know that market returns do not fall under a normal distribution, and in fact, prices actually trend, it gives us a huge advantage over those who purposely choose to ignore price.

Funny how people like to ignore the only thing that actually pays anybody.

I always thought that was so strange.

Anyway, in today's example of "Not a Head & Shoulders Top", we take a look at Copper Prices. If you have any exposure whatsoever in the market, stocks, bonds or otherwise, then this is a resolution that will interest you and most certainly impact the value of your portfolio.

So is this a massive top in Dr. Copper? Or just a continuation pattern that will resolve higher, in the direction of the underlying trend?

Before you put on your first trade or buy any asset, there's one question every investor needs to ask themselves:

What's my objective?

For most investors, the answer is pretty simple. It comes down to maximizing returns and minimizing losses in a way that fits within each individual's unique preferences.

Despite this, you'd be surprised with the number of people who use the market as an outlet to express their political views rather than as a way to make money.

We're raising this today as a reminder to stay objective and always follow the money flow, rather than the opinion of journalists or analysts.

One field that crypto investors are particularly susceptible to these biases is within the decentralized finance sector.

DeFi is the darling of the crypto world.

This is the video recording of our October 4, 2021 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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.

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.

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 their direction and make them a pretty penny.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood" column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended October 1, 2021. 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.