I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago where I was going over the geographic locations of all the members of our team. These places include California, Florida, Colorado, Venezuela, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mumbai, Delhi, South Africa and the list goes on....
The gentleman asked me how I was able to find all these people.
When I told him I just sent out a tweet whenever I needed to add someone, he almost fell out of his chair.
For me this is just common sense. Others are still coming around to the power of social.
We are a team of almost 30 people now.
And we're looking to add another one, if you or someone you know is interested.
Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended February 18, 2022. This report is published biweekly 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.
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.
Here is an inside look at our weekly Crypto Strategy Session that we have every Friday.
Sometimes there are more trading opportunities than others. That really just depends on the market environment.
In today's video we talk about the Key levels for Bitcoin, how some of the strongest Alts are setting up, and how far the correlation has come between Bitcoin and the S&P500.
The theories about Bitcoin being an inflation hedge, the theories about Bitcoin being a hedge against the US Dollar and the theories about Bitcoin being its own uncorrelated asset all turned out to be wrong.
There's NO evidence in price that proves those are anything but fairy tales.
Maybe one day one of those may turn out to be true. But we need to focus on the reality of the now and the present.
What do the facts say about what's going on? Not the conspiracy theories. Just the facts.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Gold is the hot topic this week, now that it’s finally showing signs of life.
It’s impossible to deny gold’s near-term strength. But we think the setup probably needs more time to develop and work through all the overhead supply from the past few years.
Long story short, gold is still pretty messy if it's below the 2011 highs.
If and when the shiny metal makes a decisive resolution, there should be plenty of time to join in and ride the trend higher.
As for other areas within commodities, we continue to see a growing list of contracts reclaim key levels and print fresh highs.
Procyclical commodities like crude oil and gasoline might come to mind since they’re constantly in the news cycle.
But other areas, such as grains and even livestock, are also breaking to new multi-year highs.
Today, we’re going to highlight an agricultural commodity that often gets overlooked.
Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.
We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut.
These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.
It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.
The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.
We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.
Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.
What do we know for sure about new all-time highs?
We know they aren't characteristics of downtrends.
New highs are something we regularly see in uptrends.
And wouldn't you know it, Gold Futures just made new all-time highs, priced in Japanese Yen.
"But I live in America, JC. Why should I care about gold in yen terms?"
Because Gold acts much more like a currency than a commodity. Haven't you noticed how practically every commodity on earth has skyrocketed the past 18 months, except Gold?
Besides, the new all-time highs in Gold priced in Yen also came along with new 52-week highs in Gold priced in both Euro and Australian Dollar.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
There’s been very little happening on our risk checklist, as evidence for risk appetite remains split between bulls and bears.
The last time we discussed it was in our Q1 Playbook. While the list hasn’t picked a decisive direction yet, the fact that it's such a mixed bag is information in and of itself.
It's been an excellent roadmap for us in recent months, because just like the market -- our risk checklist has also been a mess.
Let's take a look at where we stand and discuss some of the more recent developments.
