Now the "First 5 Days" of the year were up (+1.37%).
That's 2 for 2 so far in the January Trifecta.
So now what's next?
The January Barometer is the last leg of the early year triple crown.
"As January goes, so goes the rest of the year". According to my handy Stock Trader's Almanac, the S&P500 has an 83.3% hit rate for the full year when January is in the green.
So with more and more positive signs for stocks, it really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
The biggest Form 4 filing on today’s hot list is from Artal Group S.A., which revealed the purchase of 48,774 shares in small-cap biotech company Scholar Rock Holding Corporation $SRRK.
Welcome to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 6, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.
What we do here is 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.
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.
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.
In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we’re currently seeing in asset classes around the world.
They’re Buying European Banks
European Financials (EUFN) have been among the best-performing industry groups for the last three months. As you can see, price recently reclaimed a critical level of interest and is pushing against seven-month highs. This is evidence of a bullish uptick in risk appetite.
New highs exceeded new lows last week for the first time since August (and only the third time since November 2021). That is a positive development but there is more work to be done before concluding that a new bull market has been reborn.
Have you noticed precious metals printing fresh highs?
Last week, gold posted new multi-month highs. So did silver and platinum, hitting their highest levels since the spring of 2022.
Not a bad start to 2023 for these shiny rocks. And it gets better!
Gold broke out to new all-time highs relative to bonds last week. The yellow metal is not only showing strength on an absolute basis – it’s also outperforming its alternatives.
These are classic bull market characteristics and two critical pieces of evidence suggesting gold is in the early stages of a new structural uptrend.
If gold is on its way to new all-time highs, gold mining stocks will be participating.
And it just so happens they are…
If gold prices rise, companies that remove gold from the ground and sell it will surely benefit. Simple!
Check out the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index $XAU, which tracks the 30 largest precious metal mining stocks:
