From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Commodities are in the early innings of a secular bull run.

The list of raw materials hitting all-time highs since 2020 includes Gold, Copper, Wheat, Soybean Oil, Cattle,  Orange Juice, Cocoa, Heating Oil, Gasoline, Palm Oil, Lumber, Tin, Rebar, Iron Ore, and Coal. (If that roll call doesn’t scream commodity supercycle, I don’t know what does.) 

It’s an exhaustive list that will only grow in the coming years. Remember, these cycles can last decades. We’re only in year four!

Of course, there are also some laggards amongst the ranks. (ahem, Crude). But don’t lose sight of the bigger picture! 

Even Soybeans are queuing up for new all-time highs…

Check out soybean futures zoomed out to the 1950s:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money." Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to our latest project, it couldn't be any simpler!

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

The majority of my current open positions are long-biased. If the market continues to rise, I expect many of these positions to keep working for me.

My few short-delta positions are on the verge of stopping me out for a loss. They were put on as portfolio hedges against all my long exposure. So in a way, I’m happy they haven’t worked out.

That’s the thing about hedges. I don’t really want them to work. Because that means the positions I really want to work likely just got whacked.

Ok, so my hedges aren’t making me money and my long positions are. What else can I do to lock in gains and minimize the potential for giving back a lot of open profits?

Every week, we create a Power Rankings table that lists the market-cap rank of the top 20 cryptocurrencies. This allows us to see the winners and losers as they climb the market-cap ladder.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The Fed abides.

Three rate cuts remain the base case for 2024. Everyone had this scenario penciled in, including the bond market.

The US benchmark yield is holding at the same levels as last month. T-bonds are catching a modest bid. And bonds are…well, boring. 

Perhaps it’s not an ideal scenario for bond bears, but stock market bulls are welcoming the muted response…

The Bond Market Volatility Index $MOVE—the credit market’s equivalent to the VIX—is registering its lowest reading since spring 2022.

The last time the MOVE hit these levels, the Fed had yet to embark on its current hiking cycle. (We all know what followed—an epic downturn for bonds and stocks.)

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolled XHB position into May.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Magnolia Capital Fund.

The investment firm reported a purchase of $691,975 in America’s Car-Mart Inc $CRMT.

This is one of the charts I started this week's LIVE Conference Call with. How could I not?

We're looking at the Equally-weighted Nasdaq100 and Equally-weighted S&P500.

These Indexes eliminate the largest components from dominating the equation and treat each stock in the index equally.

Both of these are working on breaking out of this multi-year base to new all-time highs.

Can they do it?

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

Since the beginning of February, the two best performing sectors are Energy and Materials.

These stocks have been dominating the back half of Q1.

You're seeing new all-time highs today across the board in Materials.

Here are two of my favorite ones we've been in.