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

While most uptrends have come under pressure in 2022, the US dollar has remained as strong as any.

This dollar strength, particularly at the index level, is nothing new. We've been discussing it.

It's been taking place all year, driven by the major pairs such as the euro, the yen, and the pound.

However, something new is the burgeoning strength beneath the surface, even outside of the big developed market currencies. We've been seeing dollar internals improve drastically in recent weeks.

And now we're seeing momentum accelerate for the US Dollar Index $DXY. Today, DXY is on track for its largest single-day gain since the pandemic crash more than two years ago.

All of the evidence suggests this dollar strength is the real deal.

Let's talk about what it means and how we want to position for it.

Here's the US Dollar Index ripping to its highest level in almost 20 years:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The US Dollar Index $DXY is ripping to its highest level in 20 years today.

We just covered this dollar strength and what it means in our Currency Report, which you can read here.

We talk about the implications of a stronger dollar on risk assets, particularly stocks.

While this rally in the dollar is definitely not a good thing for stocks in the US or abroad, we see these intermarket relationships dislocate all the time.

Could stocks and the dollar rally higher together? Sure! Commodities and the dollar have already been doing this for several quarters now...

Let's talk about that quick.

We're doing something a little bit different today.

I'm thrilled to welcome my friend Justin Paterno, Portfolio Manager of the new OSPREY NFT Fund.

Whenever I have questions about NFTs, Justin is the one I turn to. In fact, a lot of my friends go to Justin with questions about NFTs.

So in this episode, I chat with Justin about all things NFTs, different "sectors" of NFTs, the future of NFTs, the price analysis aspects of NFTs and Web 3.0, and all the things that come along with those, good or bad.

I personally own a bunch of NFTs, and I have a funny feeling I will own a lot more in the coming decades. Therefore, it's probably a good idea that we get a better understanding of them.

This was a lot of fun and a nice break from all the other asset classes that we're always talking about.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our May Monthly Strategy Session on Tuesday. ASC Premium Members can click here to access the recording and the chartbook.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

It's no secret the oil and energy sectors have been outperforming in 2022.

Of course, when a trend like that is no secret, it tends to become a crowded trade. And we've seen a taste of the ramifications of that in recent weeks. There were some vicious pullbacks in all the biggest winners about two weeks ago.

Fast forward to today, and the smoke has cleared a bit. Many of these names survived the exits of hot money and are now showing signs of resuming their prior uptrends.

At the top of this list right now is Exxon Mobil $XOM.

This is the video recording of our May 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column where we'll cover all the action for the week ended April 29, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

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 direction and make them a pretty penny.

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 May 3rd @ 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.

Here are the details for Tuesday evening:

Twitter is on everyone’s mind these days. In light of Elon Musk’s takeover, there are a lot of people with mixed thoughts/feelings about the platform. But I for one am incredibly grateful for what Twitter has brought into my world.

During the depths of the financial crisis, I was trading (poorly) from home. I had left my office at the Chicago Board of Trade a couple years prior and I was having a hard time adjusting to being away from “my people.”

I missed the camaraderie of being around other traders. I missed the serendipitous strategy brainstorms. I was lacking the sounding boards to vent after a bad trading day, or to celebrate after a good one. And there was nobody else on Earth who understood the inside jokes and mannerisms that were second nature to those of us who attempt to pull money from the markets on a daily basis.

We are a different breed of human animal.

In March 2009 as the stock market was nearing the bottom of the Great Financial Crisis, I read an article in Barron’s that mentioned this “new online community called Twitter” and it highlighted people in finance who were using the platform to share trading ideas and network.