From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our “latest Under The Hood” column for the week ending February 19, 2021. As a reminder, this column will be published bi-weekly moving forward, and rotated on-and-off with our new Minor Leaguers column.

In this column, we 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.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers… there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories, along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

Every major asset class on Earth continues to illustrate risk-taking behavior on the part of market participants.

Yields, Oil, Equities, Base Metals, the Australian Dollar -- there's an overwhelming amount of new highs in offensive areas of the market right now. The weight of the evidence continues to suggest that we want to be buyers, not sellers, of stocks.

The same bullish developments and themes that we've been pounding the table on for months continue to reinforce our stance. Some examples: the rotation into SMIDs, breadth...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: After record strength, breadth is taking a well-deserved breather.

This has the hallmarks of digestion more than divergence, especially after recording yet another breadth thrust. Re-opening optimism is running high and bond yields around the world are climbing.

With earnings and economic expectations still being revised higher, the path of least resistance for stocks remains higher even if we are starting to see a few more tripping hazards.

The Financials sector took over the top spot in our large-cap relative strength rankings even though leadership has not been as evident at the mid-cap and small-cap level. Our industry group heat map shows that while banks are improving at all cap-levels, no Financials-related industry groups are near the top of the rankings. Energy climbed into the third spot in our rankings, strength that is supported at the mid-cap & small-cap level. Technology remains in the leadership group, but...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Ian Culley @ianculley

We just revised and updated our Commodities chartbook and there probably couldn't have been a better time as we believe we've just entered the early innings of a new Commodities Supercycle. 

As we reviewed each passing chart our bullish thesis on commodities was reinforced as the same overarching theme became clearer and clearer... Everything seems to be trending higher!

With a slew of massive bases, bullish breakouts, and major trend reversals, this once left-for-dead asset class is now demanding investors' attention.

And participation continues to expand as we're seeing strength across all subgroups. From base metals to grains and softs, it's all working.

Now let's dive into a few charts that illustrate this theme. 

Last Summer when Gold ran into those former highs from 2011, it only made sense for price to recognize that overhead supply that had been in place for close to a decade prior. Even if only temporarily, that was big time resistance way back when, sending precious metals tumbling. So to ignore that seemed irresponsible (see Sept 3rd Conference Call).

Now, at the time we did not know how long this process would take, or if it was even necessary. No one knew. My suspicion, at the time, was that it could take months, maybe even quarters. But maybe longer, or perhaps would never even break out at all. I didn't know. No one did.

So we sat back and waited while basically every other asset class on earth ripped higher, except bonds. So you could have owned pretty much anything but gold and treasury bonds and done great since Labor Day.

Now, while the market has punished owners of gold, it's treated Platinum...

The Team published a bullish report on Broker-Dealers today and there are a number of names worthy of our consideration for options trades.

What does the market environment look like if stocks are under pressure, and loading up on stocks is probably a bad idea?

Well, I'd argue we'll probably stop seeing new highs in Aussie Dollar and US 10-yr Yields:

It's hard not to laugh a little when we say ridiculous things like,

Regional Bank Stocks continue to be the market leaders during this Global Pandemic...."

Especially in front of a group of investors who think they're smart.

This is like the "least smart" comment you can make, according to some circles...

Introspection is a great quality to have. While a lot of introspection goes into life in general, many market participants fail to identify their errors because they do not review their actions in the market. The one thing that needs to be clear is that no new money is being created in the market. The money is simply shifting hands.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Louis Sykes @haumicharts

In a recent post discussing cyclicals, we posed the following question:

Are Energy and Financial stocks about to lead the market?

Cyclical groups are catching all the right tailwinds in this environment.

Crude Oil and Yields are pressing to new 52-week highs as investors continue to favor more economically-sensitive stocks and commodities in general. This is a bullish development and supports higher prices for some of the most beaten-down risk assets... even Financials and Energy.

As participation has expanded, we've been vocal about looking for the winners in each group without a sector bias based on relative strength.

The reason for this is simple... In a market where everything seems to be trending higher on an absolute basis, we want to put less emphasis on looking for leadership groups and...

From the desk of Steve Strazza 

Don't miss this weeks Momentum Report; our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector and Industry Group level. As a reminder, we analyze this shorter-term data within the context of the structural trends at play.

This week we're looking at two long setups from the Energy space. Nifty Energy has performed well and its time to start observing its constituents more intently.