Here's something you don't see every day.

European Financials hitting new 52-week highs?

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Here comes the Fed.

Another FOMC decision is upon us.

But the market has the central bank’s number this time, or so it seems.

The fed fund futures are pricing in an almost certain chance we’ll see a 25-basis-point rate hike come Wednesday.

With general consensus running at all-time highs, the focus will shift toward Jerome Powell’s words, basically the Fed’s forward guidance.

I won’t tune in to that press conference.

What I will do is monitor price.

When it comes to precious metals I’m following absolute trends, as usual, but I’m also tracking these two critical relative trends…

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.

Crude Oil futures are pushing up against new 3-month highs just as investors have given up on the commodities trade.

No one I speak to thinks Energy leads the way in the 2nd half of 2023.

And I speak to a lot of people who got the past year very right. Even they don't believe...

Here's what I see: Former resistance for Crude Oil in 2018 turning into support throughout the past year:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended July 21, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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 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.

Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market and its participants.

So while identifying price trends is our ultimate goal, sentiment plays an important role in that process.

Prices don't move up or down because of "fundamentals" or "the economy". The price of assets move based on positioning.

When investors are all positioned one way, and are at a consensus, who's left to drive prices further in that direction?

Last summer we saw some of the most pessimistic sentiment towards stocks in history.

Some of that sentiment has started to shift a bit, like in the AAII and II polls. We're back somewhere towards the middle in those. You need, at least, some bulls to buy stocks to have a bull market.

But when it comes to Fund Managers, Cash is still their largest position, and they're most bearish on equities.

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

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.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Investors hate commodities – especially energy. 

I don’t blame them. 

Most energy stocks and commodities have failed to provide the best opportunities for the average market participant.

In fact, they’ve been an absolute dumpster fire compared to high-flying tech names for almost a decade. 

But everything changed following the 2020 sell-off.

Commodities flipped the script, outperforming bonds and stocks. Long-forgotten energy names worked their way back in the conversation as the energy sector taught a masterclass in relative strength.

This story isn’t finished – not yet!

One glance at the market’s year-to-date performance reveals an explosive tech rally that’s managed to erase the past two years from our collective memory.

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

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to our latest project, it couldn't be any simpler!

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Bonds are breaking out!

Yes… Bonds!

No, I’m not talking about US Treasuries. Those “risk-free” assets have plenty of work to do before I can take an informed long position.

I’m referring to corporate bonds. Remember, companies have numerous ways to raise capital besides selling shares – bonds being one of them.

But they're not your run-of-the-mill corporate bonds flashing a buy signal…

They’re the issues investors can convert into equity.

Check out the Convertible Bond ETF $CWB:

CWB has traced a classic bullish reversal in price as it completes a yearlong basing formation.