We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

There's no denying it.

The US dollar has been an incredible reflection of financial conditions this year. By extension, the correlations between the dollar and risk assets have held firm.

Equities and crypto were under pressure whenever the US dollar trended higher in 2022.

And when the dollar was correcting, equities and crypto were trending higher.

We don't need to overcomplicate this.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Futures down some after yesterday's nice move to the upside.

It could be a consolidation day, but I would like $SPX 3,850 held today. 

The largest insider transaction on today’s list came in a Form 4 filing from Durable Capital Partners.

The hedge fund reported an additional purchase of $8.7 million in Duolingo $DUOL.

I don't know how many times I've said it this year. Someone go back and count.

But the catalyst IS THE WEAKER DOLLAR.

It's not the fed, or the election, or yield curves, or wars, or Santa Claus or any of the other random arguments that we've all heard along the way.

It's the US Dollar.

Period.

It's the weekly currency edition of What the FICC?

So far this week, the Japanese yen has stolen the show. But where does that leave the USD/JPY heading into 2023?

Check it out!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their...

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What do you do when the party gets out of hand?

You raise the roof!

That’s what the Bank of Japan (BoJ) did yesterday as its former yield curve control policies became untenable. After intervening to keep its 10-year yield below 0.25%, it shifted the ceiling to 0.50%. 

Naturally, the yen responded in earnest. It posted an explosive rally following the BoJ policy shift, gaining more than 500 pips against the dollar. 

But where does that leave the USD/JPY heading into 2023?

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

In today's Morning Briefing, I wrote about $SPY and $TQQQ trade ideas.

Both targets were reached. SPY ran right into resistance at 387 and then pulled back, as was alerted.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Seems like almost everyone has a 2023 earnings estimate for the S&P 500. The thinking seems to be that if you are going to make up a year-end guess at price you should come up with one for earnings as well. That’s not a game I want to play.     

Why It Matters: It’s not the overall levels that matter, but whether those levels are being revised higher or revised lower. Earnings estimates for more and more companies were being revised lower over the second half of 2021 and the first half of 2022. That trend has stabilized  since mid-year. If the worst case for 2023 is priced in, there is room for both price and earnings revisions to move higher. If it is not, then the lows established over the second half of 2022 are not likely to hold. Remember, when it comes to adapting to incoming information, it’s not a question of whether it is good or bad, but whether it is better or worse than expected.

In this week’s Sentiment Report we take a closer look at how investors are feeling...