From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

It doesn’t matter which way you slice it. The current market environment is a US dollar story.

Whether you’re talking about stocks or commodities, a rally in risk assets isn’t happening against a rising dollar.

It’s that simple.

You probably think I say the same thing every week. That’s because I do.

Of course, I throw in a well-defined trade setup here and there, but always within the context of the dollar and its impact on the major asset classes.

It’s that important. 

As the US Dollar Index rally is well underway, it’s interesting some individual USD crosses are finding resistance at historical levels of interest to both the currencies involved and risk assets!

Here’s a chart of the US dollar/Swedish krona cross zoomed out to the late 1990s: 

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

There's been no getting away from it.

These last few months have been rather lackluster if you're a crypto trader.

But that's perfectly fine.

The market should never be your dopamine fix. The ability to sit on the sidelines for long periods of time -- as difficult as it may be -- is often the differentiating factor separating mediocre traders from good ones.

Even in the face of this recent strength, there's still not a whole lot to discuss.

Cryptocurrencies have completed multi-year distribution patterns and are now retesting their breakdown levels from the underside.

There are most definitely mean-reversion trade opportunities out there. But they're low-conviction, counter-trend in nature, and messy.

Meanwhile, Ethereum and many other names have bounced nicely back into supply zones following their respective rallies.

If this tape has reflected anything, it's to be very aggressive in taking any profits. This is particularly true considering the countless whipsaws we've seen over the recent months.

So, for today's note, we wanted to be a little obnoxious in pointing out all this...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Artal Group, which reported a purchase of roughly $40.4 million in Lexicon Pharmaceuticals $LXRX.

Artal Group now owns 83,835,950 LXRX shares, representing a roughly 47.5% ownership stake.

This is the video recording of our August 1st Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

Certain stocks that have displayed strength over the past few months are making new highs. Here we have a long idea from one such outperformer.

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.

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

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...

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.

Real Yields Roll in Favor of Gold

There has been plenty of evidence suggesting a significant breakdown in one of the world’s most critical inflationary assets, Gold. Miners look terrible, Silver and Platinum are weak, and the Silver/Gold ratio recently hit multi-year lows. These aren’t the type of data points that support higher gold prices. Real yields are another piece of evidence we can add to that list. The chart below shows the US 10-year real rate inverted and a chart of Gold. They look almost identical. Gold futures tend to trend lower when real rates rise (moving lower on the chart). Despite every reason to break down, Gold has remained resilient. And now, as many of the negative data points mentioned above begin to reverse, including real yields, a rally in gold could ensue. 

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 as 87% of our list closed higher with a median return of 3.06%.
• Silver $SI was this week's winner, closing with an 8.49% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a loss of -9.94 %.
• There was a 2% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 74% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs.
• Meanwhile, only 9% of...