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.
We’ve had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.
For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1B and $2B.
That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.
The way we did this is simple…
To make the cut for our revised Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1B and $4B.
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.
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.
March rally takes some sting off of a challenging Q1.
Short-term strength not yet reflected in longer-term trends.
More new lows than new highs in the US, but Emerging Market new high list expands.
Stocks continued to bounce off of their March lows last week. It’s not quite lipstick on a pig but this move does take some of the sting off of what has been a weak Q1 for equities. All eleven sectors in the S&P 500 are now in positive territory for March, but only three (Energy, Utilities and Financials) have YTD gains and two of those, just barely so. Four sectors, accounting for more than 50% of the market cap of the S&P 500, are still down 8% or more heading into the final week of the quarter.
In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.
Is There Enough in the Tank?
Pretty much everything in the world of energy has been on fire for the last quarter. Crude oil and energy stocks have been the stand-out performers this year as both have enjoyed a swift leg higher since early January. Despite the impressive price action, both are at logical levels to do some consolidating. Crude Oil and the Energy Sector SPDR (XLE) are challenging critical levels of overhead supply at former highs. Both of these areas have acted as resistance in the past, so it would not be unusual for sellers to show up once again. While the primary trends are still very much intact for energy stocks and futures, a breather here and some digestion of the recent gains would be constructive. The next key piece of information should come in the form of how that digestion looks. Do we correct through price, or time?
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.
These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.
This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday April 5th @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.
Good morning everyone! This dispatch comes to you from deep in the northernmost reaches of Northern California, on the edge of the great Redwoods National Park.
I flew out here on Sunday morning with my oldest friend (since we were both five years old). After landing and shopping for some provisions, we got a short three-mile hike in during the afternoon/early evening to get our feet acclimated. But it was just a warm-up for the 30 miles we hope to cover today through Wednesday. Yesterday, the weather was perfect, the trail conditions were excellent, and the giant Redwoods were absolutely stunning! And we're just getting started. Hopefully, the weather continues to hold up (fingers crossed!).
Of course, I brought my laptop, and since my East Coast friend was suffering from a little jet lag, he crashed early last night. That left me some time to rip through charts in my hotel room, as one, such as me, does.
During my scanning, I couldn't help but get fully distracted by this chart of $GLD:
