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.

We...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Volatility reigns!

Overall, the market consolidated but really couldn't decide if it wanted higher or lower.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Bulls on the Investors Intelligence survey continued to climb while bears fell for the fifth week in a row. The bull-bear spread has now decisively cleared its August high as investors move to embrace the stock market rally.    

Why It Matters: One of the missing ingredients for sustained stock market strength last year was the embrace of investors. To be fair, investors did not abandon equities from a positioning perspective and, in fact, during the record stretch of more bears than bulls on the AAII survey, equity ETFs have still seen nearly a quarter-trillion dollars of inflows. Nonetheless, rally attempts last year brought neither broad market strength (in the form of new highs > new lows) nor a meaningful expansion in optimism. In 2023, investors are seeing strength and believing that it can persist. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy (at least for a while). Almost all of the net gains in the S&P 500 since 2015 have come with the bull-bear spread above 18.

In this...

Whoa baby. This might be a fun one. Or not. Either way, we'll likely find out pretty quickly.

Chinese stocks continue to offer up interesting opportunities. And today's trade is no exception. And to play it, we're going to do it in a fairly aggressive manner, but with a tight risk management stop.

Let's get right to it.

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

Crypto markets can be daunting for those who come from traditional backgrounds.

There are entirely new market mechanisms, trading hours, different exchanges, and distinct ways to analyze the market, let alone the decentralized nature of how these markets operate.

It's no wonder that people find this asset class complicated.

Adding to the already heightened perplexity of these markets is how they're driven and how investors benchmark their performance.

Hear me out.

The most significant insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filed by Super Micro Computer $SMCI Director Shiu Leung Chan.

Chan reported a $256,440 purchase of SMCI.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market finished strong yesterday, and we just might need a little breather before the next move.

This week we're looking into Capital Goods sector stocks.

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.

It starts with credit.

Bottom line.

This isn't crypto where all these shitcoins can go to zero and it won't matter to anyone who matters.

These aren't marijuana stocks that are irrelevant to global asset allocation.

This is the bond market.

This is the biggest and baddest of them all.

We're talking about almost a $120 Trillion asset class.

It's just math: if there is real systemic risk in the equities market, you're going to see it in credit.

There's no way around it.

And so how are credit spreads doing?

As tight as they have been since last summer, and getting tighter: