From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge 

Whether more stocks are going up or down these days simply depends on where you look. Some advance-decline lines are moving higher, but others are moving lower.

Weakness and divergences in these indicators are more often than not resolved over time, but the longer they persist the more concerning they become.

This hasn’t been an issue for most of the major averages, as the S&P 500 and other large-cap indexes keep making new highs with confirmation from their A/D lines. 

Yet when we look beneath the surface, and particularly down the cap scale, we're seeing a different story. Ultimately, some stocks are going up, but most are not.

You’ve probably heard already, but the current environment is an absolute mess as the weight of the evidence continues to hang in the balance. In today’s post, we’ll discuss some charts that do a great job illustrating all the mixed signals out there right now. 

In recent weeks, we've been discussing the potential upside in the altcoins if Bitcoin gets back into the 60,000's.

We're talking doubles and triples, at least...

There's no doubting that we've held a more bullish view when Bitcoin was hovering in the 30,000's, and more recently when Bitcoin resolved higher into the 40,000's.

But as always, we need to remain objective in our approach and look for cracks in our thesis.

It's one of many reasons why we always play devil's advocate; that is, collating a list of data points that go against our thesis and would subsequently make us change our perspective.

Let's not forget, flipping our approach as new evidence comes in is not only an advantage, but in public markets, it's a necessity.

So with that said, what if this isn't as clean a breakout as we initially intended?

What then?

Seasonality of markets is something I've done a lot of work on throughout my career. As humans who are part of society, we behave differently depending on the seasons. We dress differently, we hang out with different people, we go to different places, all according to a calendar.

If you think those behavior changes don't impact our decision making, then I don't think you understand humans. And if you think those behaviors and decisions don't affect how we participate in markets, then I think you're just being naïve.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of the annual Stock Traders Almanac published by my pal Jeff Hirsch.

Yesterday after the close, I had a great chat with Ed Clissold, the Chief U.S. Strategist at Ned Davis Research. The podcast episode will be up shortly, so keep an eye out for it. You can subscribe to my Technical Analysis Radio Podcast here, if you haven't already.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

This week I had a chance to chat with my old pal Phil Pearlman, who's the Chief Behavioral Officer at Osprey Funds.

Phil and I have been talking markets regularly for over a decade, both behind the scenes and on YouTube.

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would be here today discussing on-chain analysis of crypto currencies. But here we are!

In today's video we discuss two of my favorite gauges of sentiment, the exchange balances and the dormancy rates. We also touch on the current breadth in crypto markets as the percentage of coins breaking out to new 30 day highs continues to expand.

Crypto just once again pierced a whopping $2T market cap.

It seems now more than ever that the entire space is heating up to unseen levels.

The entire asset class has ballooned to nearly 10,000 coins and tokens, all with their own individual whitepapers, goals, and communities.

Activity on the blockchain has never been higher, smart contracts and DeFi are in full swing, and now the world is beginning to pick up what NFTs are all about.

But it wasn't always like this.

All of this activity flourishing before our very own eyes stands on the shoulders of failed projects, countless crashes, and the destruction of wealth in now dead tokens.

If this asset class has taught us anything, it's to manage your damn risk.

It doesn't matter how unique the whitepaper is or the fundamental use case of the token if the market's truly coming off.

It was hilarious to see everyone talk about the fundamentals of their altcoins when things were great earlier in the year, but tried becoming technicians on the way down.

Classic market behavior.

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y-axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.

This chart can be any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes, it’s an absolute price chart. Other times, it’s on a relative basis.

It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!

The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.

While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…

So let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

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

The market has been a choppy mess for months. 

Unless you’ve been stuck under a rock or at the beach all summer, this is old news. And we’ve admittedly been a bit obnoxious when it comes to rehashing this theme. But usually when we find ourselves harping on something, it's because it's a big deal.

Our own behavior can be fantastic information, and it's become a part of our process to pay special attention whenever we begin to repeat ourselves a lot.

This week is no different, as the US Dollar Index $DXY provides another example of the market’s sloppy state of affairs.

Just when we thought we might finally have some decisive price action in the Dollar, Friday’s attempted breakout followed by Monday’s weakness is casting some serious doubts.

Was last week’s breakout above the March pivot highs valid?

Or was it just another failed move to add to the market’s growing list of whipsaws and fake-outs?