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

All-time highs remain out of reach for gold bugs.

But not all is lost. In fact, I still see constructive consolidations on longer time frames. 

It’s messy. But I’m impressed with gold’s and silver’s resilience as they twist and bend beneath supply.

But how low can they go before they break…

For gold, I’m focusing on the prior commodity supercycle peak at roughly 1,924. 

If it loses those former highs, the key retracement level at approximately 1,825 highlights the next potential support area:

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

The largest insider buy on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by Carl Icahn, who revealed a purchase of $11.2 million in Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX.

Icahn now owns 15.65% of outstanding shares of SWX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

As I write this note, $SPY has finally filled its gap pre-market at 421.22.

The push higher was brought on by the debt ceiling deal.

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.

You're hearing a lot these days about weakening market breadth.

But if you've noticed, those lies are only coming from journalists and other types of people with no formal training or experience in technical analysis.

That's like me pretending to be an expert in chess because I watched some people playing this one time in Washington Square Park.

If you think that the Equally-weighted S&P500 underperforming is evidence of deteriorating market breadth, you fall into this category of the misinformed and confused.

It's not a market breadth thing. It's simply a sector rotation thing.

In bull markets historically there's less of a need, or no need at all, for the safest stocks.

These defensive sectors include areas like Consumer Staples, Utilities, Healthcare and stocks with Low Volatility.

All of them made new 52-week lows on Friday relative to the S&P500:

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Former resistance turns into potential support – and vice versa.

That’s Polarity 101. It’s a pattern found throughout the market. It doesn’t matter the asset class – Bitcoin or Berkshire. It’s simply human psychology at work. 

These levels often mark missed opportunities. And, in the process, they create price memory that fuels increased activity. Traders and investors are driven to transact at these levels, highlighting supply and demand zones that act as support or resistance.

Why does this matter right now?

Because gold futures have sliced through near-term support, careening toward a level etched in the minds of goldbugs everywhere…

I’m talking about the 2011 highs!

Gold futures recently undercut a key level marked by the February pivot highs and last month’s pivot lows – a polarity zone.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

"You can’t pay me enough to buy US Treasuries."

That’s the message from the bond market.

The result: a persistent rise in interest rates.

Classic intermarket ratios – copper versus gold, regional banks $KRE versus REITs $IYR, and the Russell 2000 $IWM versus the S&P 500 $SPY – all point to lower yields.

This has been going on for months. Some may argue that these ratios are broken or no longer carry significant insight into the direction of rates.

It may be true that the strong relationship between the above ratios and interest rates has indeed decoupled. 

But it’s not solely relative trends hinting at declining yields.

The stocks that benefit the most from a rising rate environment also look terrible on absolute terms…

The ProShares Equities for Rising Rates ETF $EQRR tells the story: