From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

This All Star Charts PLUS Monthly Playbook breaks down the investment universe into a series of  binary decisions, tactical calls and asset allocation models. 

Paired with our Weight of the Evidence Dashboard and our Playbook Chartbook, this piece is designed to help dynamic asset allocators follow trends, pursue opportunities, and manage risk.

The trend in commodities has rolled over but, for the 96th week in a row, the up-trend in commodities relative to stocks remains intact. You need to go back to the early 70’s to see a longer sustained period of strength in commodities versus stocks. 

Why It Matters: For some, commodities are the forgotten step-child of asset allocation discussions. This is especially the case for those with a narrow frame of reference and a lack of historical perspective. Prior to the current trend favoring...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market took another hit today. We broke below last week's lows and plowed through support levels.

The $SPX has support at 3,900, then 3,860. Resistance is at 3,959.

Focusing our attention on buying stocks over the past 5-6 months has paid very well. This is especially true in the stocks that have been showing the most relative strength this year.

The laggards remain laggards. The losers are mostly still losers.

The breadth improvement, however, remains in place.

Rotation overseas continues to broaden.

It's gotten harder and harder to make money from the short side since this Summer.

There's been no questioning how we've been positioned in crypto markets.

For the longest time, we've promoted high cash positions in this tape. Patience has been a significant virtue for traders to maintain.

Extending on this overarching theme, we yet again argued that caution is advised in the short term in yesterday's note.

While we've been putting forward the utility of patience in this cryptocurrency market for some time, we especially see a confluence of concerning data points.

Most importantly, the S&P 500 is once again testing its channel resistance and AVWAP off the highs, where it has found resistance over the last year.

Further, the dollar index is retesting its breakout level from the 2017 and 2020 highs following the collapse of the FTX and Alameda ecosystem.

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

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

As of early this morning, futures are flat. The $SPX rejected the 200-day moving average yesterday and dropped right into support.

I'll be watching to see if SPX 3,962 is held throughout the day. Otherwise, we can see 3,932.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Coliseum Capital Management LLC.

The hedge fund reported a purchase worth roughly $6.7 million in ModivCare $MODV. It now owns more than 9.12% of outstanding shares.

This is the video recording of our December 5th Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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 uptrend for bonds peaked in early 2021. The trend for stocks did so a year later. Commodities peaked in June and over the past few months the trend has been slowly (an unevenly rolling over). 

More Context: It could always reverse higher, but the commodity trend has fallen two weeks in a row and is down in 6 of the past 10 weeks. As the summer peak in commodities moves further into the rear-view mirror, it looks increasingly like all three of the major asset classes are now in downtrends. This leaves investors with fewer places of refuge as the most challenging year in a generation grinds to a close. Business cycle history suggests that the next important turn in trend will be bonds turning higher (and bond yields turning lower). It hasn’t happened yet (despite the recent drop in bond yields) but our long-term trend indicators suggest bonds are closer to turning higher than stocks (and bonds are trending higher relative to stocks). While the pattern is not set in stone, equities have not made the case that...

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:

• This week, our macro universe was positive, with 89% of our list closing higher with a median return of 1.26%.
• Silver $SI was the winner, closing with a 7.50% gain.
• The biggest loser was the Volatility Index $VIX, with a weekly loss of -7.02%.
• There was a 2% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 4%.
• 79% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs, and 45% made...