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

The narrative is quickly shifting back to tighter monetary policy following last week’s higher-than-anticipated CPI and strong economic data.

With these newfound recessionary fears circulating, I want to share a chart I like to avoid… The 2s10s treasury spread.

In some market environments Technology, and other sectors full of growth stocks, tend to outperform.

Usually interest rates are falling in that type of market.

You got a good dose of that for about decade.

US Stocks were the global leaders while Europe and other parts of the world, without that exposure to growth, made little progress.

See here.

And now with interest rates rising, other sectors have emerged as leaders. Industrials, for example.

This is all perfectly normal for this type of environment. We've seen it before, and to expect anything else would be irresponsible.

There was a time where Tech stocks were the leadership group.

That time is behind us.

You could wish and pray and hope that it becomes that environment once again.

Or you can live in reality.

That's up to you.

Look at Materials, for example, holding above all that former support from the past couple years. If $XLB is above 80, this is sector we need to own:

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Earlier this week we held our February Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I can’t stop talking about the softs trading on the NYMEX.

Coffee, cocoa, and OJ are all ripping higher. It seems only a matter of time before sugar and cotton join the fun.  

So can we extend an underlying bullish thesis for ag commodities to the grain contracts traded on the CBOT?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Regardless, I want to be prepared if and when the Chicago grain markets break out…

Let’s review the most actively traded contracts for corn and the soybean complex. First up…

Corn

Here’s the May corn futures contract:

There are two ways to play it.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market was straight down most of the day.

We saw a little bounce, but nothing that impressive.

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

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

This is the video recording of our February 24, 2023, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

Stocks continue to be slippery with the S&P 500 down 6 out of the last 8 trading days.

I'm in the camp that this is a constructive pullback after a fantastic run to kick off 2023. JC has been pounding the table all month about how sloppy, digestive trading action in the month of February is perfectly normal market behaviour.

With February drawing to a close soon, I wouldn't be suprised to see this downdraft exhaust itself soon. As such, I'm going to make a tactical bet that a leading name in the banking/finance sector is going to hold these levels and potentially lead the way back to 2023 highs.

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Annual data shows that the Federal government’s cost to service its debt (as a % of GDP) reached its highest level in two decades last year. 

Why It Matters: Debt servicing costs were at a generational low just a few years ago. Now persistent inflation is pushing bond yields higher and the latest CBO projections show federal debt levels continuing to soar (new highs that aren’t cause for celebration). Interest payments on the debt are moving from afterthought to fiscal burden. Without a rediscovery of fiscal discipline getting a handle on inflation is going to be a challenge and that is likely to keep yields higher for longer. A quick return to the market and fiscal conditions of the past decade does not appear to be in the cards.    

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

The largest insider transaction on today's Hot List is a Form 4 filing by Samuel Cowley, general counsel and secretary of Insight Enterprises $NSIT.

Cowley reported a purchase of $853,065 in NSIT.