The US Dollar Index $DXY is on cruise control with nothing ahead but an open road.
The few obstacles that stood in its way are falling to the wayside. That’s right – the handful of commodity currencies that have refused to roll over during the past six months are beginning to slip.
Before we get to these fresh breakdowns, let’s set the scene with two currencies that have been anything but resilient – the euro and the British pound.
Higher rates and tighter central banks are a global phenomenon this year. In fact, the Fed is one of a dozen central banks meeting this week and a majority are expected to raise rates, again. Both the breadth and intensity of rate hikes are pretty much unprecedented. That doesn’t even get into quantitative tightening in the US. The Fed’s balance sheet is 10-times as large as it was two decades ago and has only begun to shrink (the 26-week change just turned negative last month).
Expectations for the Fed are drifting higher. Futures have now priced in 100 basis points of tightening this year than the Fed thought would be necessary when it released its last dot plot (in June). Tomorrow’s updated economic projections and expected path of rates will receive at least as much scrutiny as an actual rate hike that gets announced.
Yesterday, we framed this market action in a rather dramatic tone, arguing that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are staring into the abyss.
With Bitcoin testing its year-to-date lows, there's little in the way preventing crypto assets from experiencing yet another significant leg down in the penultimate stages of this year.
So, alongside the commentary in yesterday's letter, we want to approach this market from two angles and let money flow dictate our execution.
The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by the CEO of Ivanhoe Electric Inc $IE, who reported a purchase worth roughly $3.3 million.
The only 13G on our list today was filed by Boxer Capital, LLC. The investment firm revealed an initial 5.70% ownership stake in SpringWorks Therapeutics $SWTX.
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.
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.
Welcome back to our latest Under The Hood columne, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 16, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.
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.
In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.
New Lows for Big Tech
When it comes to the most important stocks, it’s all about tech. Mega cap technology companies dominate the US indexes and are in just about everyone's portfolio. The chart below illustrates just how paramount their performance is for the broader market. We have overlaid the relative trend between technology stocks and the S&P 500 with the Nasdaq 100 on absolute terms.
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.
