From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The FOMC stuck to its script this week, kicking the can and keeping rates steady.

Everyone was expecting the news. But the market wasn’t expecting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell (the man, the myth, the legend) to completely dash its hopes of a March cut. 

Strangely enough, rates continue to fall on the news – even as markets adjust to the possibility of the initial rate cut now coming in May.

Before you run out to buy US treasury bonds, check out the overlay chart of the US 2- and 30-year yields:

There’s a big difference.

The 2-year yield is churning sideways, reflecting the market’s expectations of the FOMC’s next move – nothing in the foreseeable future.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The entire marketplace is fixated on tomorrow’s FOMC meeting.

Will the Fed make its first rate cut in March, or will it be in June?

Who knows.

I enjoy speculating as much as the next guy, but I’m not into guessing on next moves by central bankers.

I prefer to track another market participant with a Ph.D. in economics, Dr. Copper.

And we can’t discuss copper without including the Australian dollar!

Check out the Australian dollar overlaid with copper futures:

They look almost identical.

I added a 10-day rolling correlation study in the lower pane, highlighting the tight relationship over shorter time frames.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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 now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metal charts aren't painting a bullish picture for investors.

Silver is underperforming gold. The Gold Miners ETF $GDX is posting new all-time lows versus the broader market. And everywhere you look, individual gold mining stocks are breaking down.

Well, not all mining stocks. One chart continues to fly high…

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Stocks aren’t the only assets catching a bid.

Commodities are, too. 

Despite their current rallies, the average investor isn’t concerned with cocoa, cotton, and lean hog futures. 

I get it… What do lean hog futures have to do with Tesla $TSLA?

But Dr. Copper – with its Ph.D. in economics – is ripping higher this week. 

And crude oil is trading above our risk level outlined last month.

Check out crude oil futures slicing through the 75 level:

Kudos to those who took the signal, as it’s over a third of the way to our target of 83. 

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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. Click here to check it out.

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:

*Click table to enlarge view

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

High-yield bonds are printing fresh highs relative to US Treasuries – signs of a healthy risk appetite. 

Bond market volatility is collapsing, allowing equities to take center stage. 

And interest rates are trending lower since peaking last October.

But looking ahead to next month, we could see rates correct higher.

The US 10-year yield tends to rise in February – more so than any other month of the year except April:

It would make sense for this seasonal trend to continue.

The 10-year yield dropped more than 100 basis points during Q4 last year. 

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

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-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

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

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

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.

Welcome to the Short Report.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 19, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation 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.