From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

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.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

What a year, eh?

The S&P 500 posted its worst return since 2008!

I think it's fair to say that if your portfolio survived 2022, you're doing a great job.

You even outperformed most funds and equity managers. Just think how well you can do in a more favorable environment.

To that point, just because it was a bad year for markets doesn't mean it had to be a bad year for YOU.

For over a decade, stocks in the United States outperformed Commodities by a long shot.

In fact, Commodities underperformed for so long, that many investors even forgot that they were an asset class.

"Stocks and Bonds JC!", they would tell me.

And I would say, "No kids, it's Stocks, Bonds AND Commodities".

Did you get through our entire Gold Report?

What did you think?

Shoot me a note and let us know!

Today I want to talk about relative outperformance.

You see, in bull markets, assets not only do well on an absolute basis, but they also tend to outperform their alternatives.

I don't know if you noticed, but Gold just went out for the year at its highest levels ever relative to U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Gold is also making new 6-month highs relative to U.S. Stocks:

Was 2022 such a hard year in the market like the media keeps telling you?

Or was it just a normal year that was hard, because every year is hard?

I think about this a lot.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @Ianculley

Bonds have endured quite the year.

Perhaps 2022 marks the worst on record, or at least the past 100 years. Nevertheless, we’ve all witnessed extraordinary selling pressure in what has historically acted as a safe-haven asset. 

Despite the dismal returns and destruction of the traditional 60/40 portfolio, the bond market continues to instill valuable lessons in those willing to listen and learn.

Check out these three poignant reminders courtesy of the bond market…

Trends Persist

It’s an oldie but a goodie. And interest rates have refused to let us forget that trends persist.

The chart below highlights the five-, 10-, and 30-year US Treasury yields finding support at their respective year-to-date trendlines and pivot highs from the spring.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

So long, 2022. It’s been real.

With only a few trading hours left in the year, I’m ready to turn the page. I’m sure plenty of you can relate.

In the spirit of looking ahead to a bright and beautiful 2023, I want to share seven of my favorite commodity charts for January.

No grand thesis, just seven potential setups that have my attention heading into the new year.

1. Sugar

Sugar futures print a potential failed breakout after coiling within a tight range since the summer of 2021: The lack of upside follow-through accompanied by a bearish momentum divergence warrants caution.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Have you checked out our new Gold Report?

We run through nearly 4o charts, breaking down the key levels and intermarket relationships, suggesting Gold could hit 5,000.

In this update, I’m going to share two of my favorite charts. 

Plus, I’ll reveal one mining stock setting up for a buy signal.

First, Gold outside the US presents a very different picture.

Yes, the USD dominates global trade. And yes, we want to witness a break to fresh all-time highs priced in US dollars. But when we look around the world at other major currencies, Gold has already broken out!

This is what Gold looks like when we remove the US dollar bias:

We're officially half the way through this year's Santa Claus Rally.

I like to check in on this one as it goes on because of the impact it's had on past markets.