Yes, it's tricky both tactically and mentally to get long in the stock market right now. One look at the broader indexes would give any rookie market technician pause.

That said, there are still pockets of strength that are working and growing stronger --- both on a relative and an absolute basis. Which, by the way, is not uncommon. Even in the most vicious bear markets, there are often certain sectors that see gains. And so a bear market may force us to be more selective when searching for bullish bets, but the opportunities are there for those willing to do the work.

With that in mind, today's trade is one of those names that is thriving in this current market environment.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Every day the blossoming crypto asset class makes strides toward what appears to be its inevitable maturation.

Almost all breakthrough technologies follow an Adoption S-Curve; more on that here.

Chart credit: Osprey Funds

Most look at Bitcoin on the S-Curve through the lens of standard metrics of volatility or network data.

Still, an often underappreciated element of Bitcoin's maturation is the rising cohort of traders approaching the market from the perspective of yield.

An influx of capital in the coming years will come not just from the directional side but instead to capture yield.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Jan Barta of Pale Fire Capital.

Barta continues to grow his position in Groupon $GRPN, as this is the second large Form 4 filing in the last two weeks.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

The turmoil in equity markets has stolen all the attention since last year. But stocks aren't the only asset class that's a mess. We're getting the same kind of mixed signals and sloppy price action from forex markets.

While stocks remain under pressure, currencies have been throwing head fakes and dishing out whipsaws all year long. The AUD/USD broke to fresh nine-month highs just last week only to reverse 200 pips by Friday’s close.

We're seeing this type of action from currencies all over the world. It’s hard to trust a breakout these days. As frustrating as these failed moves may be, there are some clean chart patterns and favorable setups shaping up right now.

One area where the trend is very clear is the Japanese yen. Just about anything priced in Yen has been rallying recently as the currency continues to collapse.

Today, we’re going to highlight the massive base in the USD/JPY.

Lets’ dive in.

Here’s the weekly chart of the USD/JPY cross:

...

Yesterday we documented how we're shifting back to our defensive strategy. Tight trading correlations to weak equities dictate this approach.

At the same time, we've been stopped out of most altcoin long positions.

There's little to discuss in the way of tactical trading opportunities.

Even the strongest names can't get it done when we look at the alts. We're seeing many failed breakouts, and there's little to like in shorter time frames right now.

Here are a few examples.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaways:

• Lack of follow through evident beneath the surface
• Risk Off Environment persists
• Defensives gain strength while Value & Growth stumble

Last month’s equity market bounce was impressive at the moment. But it has failed to produce the sort of strength that argues in favor of a broadly-based “risk on” environment. Short-term upside surges have not been followed by breadth thrusts in our work. Despite a handful of days in which new highs outnumbered new lows, it has not been consistent. We are now at 20 consecutive weeks of more new lows than new highs and our 10-day net new high advance/decline line has been falling since November. Our weight of the evidence dashboard suggests a cautious approach remains warranted.

At this point, it seems evident that the degree of the March move higher was as much a function of the weakness that preceded it as anything else. We need to see...

Abdiel Capital Management LLC reported a $2.6 million purchase in the cloud computing and enterprise software stock Appian Corporation $APPN.

The firm now owns more than 5.9 million shares, representing a 15% ownership interest.

In bull markets we see more stocks making new highs than new lows.

I know that probably sounds like common sense, but you'd be surprised....

It's really just basic math. You need more stocks going up and making new highs, than stocks going down and making new lows.

And although we did see a couple of days of more new highs than new lows recently, we haven't seen that for a sustained period, yet.

In fact, we're going on 20 straight weeks of more new lows than new highs.

Energy is dominating the market sector conversation these days. And well, you can see a reflection of that in the stocks and the strength coming through.

Today we're here to discuss a long setup in the Energy space.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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 $1 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.

And it doesn’t have to be a Russell component–it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

After our price and liquidity filters are applied, we sort by proximity to new highs in order to...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind… and they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to move in their...