From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

New all-time highs have a funny way of shifting perspectives.

Not too long ago, many considered gold a “dumpster fire,” a “hot mess,” or an “opportunity cost.”

All were fair assessments. 

Everything changed last month when gold rocketed to its highest recorded level.

Yet, for some reason, investors weren’t buying into its strength.

But a 12% gain over the past five weeks has quickly turned reluctant investors into ravenous speculators.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Commodities are hot.

Even the most ardent tech investors can’t avert their gaze from Gold’s eye-catching new highs. 

If you find yourself unprepared, don’t be alarmed. We have a plan…

Buy base breakouts.

Check out coffee futures ripping above a shelf of former highs:

We often joke that catching base breakouts like this gets us out of bed in the morning. (It’s the best part of waking up.)   

The trade setup outlined at the beginning of the year still stands, though the contacts have changed. (May now represents the most actively traded month and our contract of choice. However, it will likely roll to July next week.)

I like coffee futures long above 197 with an initial target of 260. But it wouldn’t surprise me if coffee experiences a parabolic advance...

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 Airbnb and Uber.

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

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the remaining names by...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Can we all give the rate cut debate a break?

Everyone is obsessing over the Fed’s rate cut plans. Meanwhile, interest rates are climbing to their highest level since early December.

Instead of following Fed gossip and what-ifs, focus on what is: Yields continue to creep higher as inflationary assets rip.

Check out our Global Benchmark Rate Composite, an equal-weight basket of Developed Market 10-year yields (Germany, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, and the US):

Our global composite is holding well above the lower bounds of a yearlong range, catching toward the underside of a flat 200-day moving average. 

Yields on sovereign debt show no signs of an imminent collapse.

Could rates roll over in the coming quarters? Absolutely! 

But the data fails to support a falling interest rate thesis. In fact, the charts suggest quite the opposite…

...

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...

We also highlight lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We publish this...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended March 29, 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.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

People are asking me if gold's breakout is the real deal.

All I can do is smile, state my bullish outlook, and draw a line in the sand.

Of course, I can’t resist adding an obnoxious upside target or two (the higher, the better).

Hopefully, it sounds simple. That’s the goal! It never pays to overcomplicate price action…. 

If you’re still wondering whether precious metals are a viable investment despite gold’s new all-time highs, let’s identify the underlying trend…

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Mercado Libre 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

Black Gold is breaking out!

Crude oil is flipping weeks of indecision into conviction following a hard retest that frustrated traders earlier this month. 

Let’s take a look…

Check out crude’s upside resolution to fresh five-month highs:

Yesterday marked the completion of a tight bull flag – a typical characteristic of an uptrend.

The path of least resistance points higher toward our 95 target. 

However, I would be remiss not to mention momentum. The 14-day RSI has yet to register an overbought reading above 70. 

This isn’t an immediate concern. But if the crude oil rally does have legs, momentum will reach overbought conditions. In fact, the energy sector's recent performance is showing no signs of stress.

The Oil Refiners ETF $CRAK...

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

Last week, we released a Freshly Squeezed report detailing long setups in some of the market's most heavily shorted stocks.

This week, we got fresh short sale data from FINRA as well as fresh breakouts from a growing list of stocks in our universe.

We thought it would be irresponsible not to do a follow-up report covering them.

This is just the environment we're in.

Here's what we're doing about it.

Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with the highest short positions. When a stock is heavily shorted, incremental buyers are waiting in the wings to close out their bearish bets.

We love this, as new buyers are the one true catalyst for higher prices.

When shorts are proven wrong, they become buyers of the stock. Many times, as this happens, momentum comes into these names and fuels massive short-covering rallies.

For this reason, we pair short-interest data with short-term momentum overlays, as this combination is needed to spark the moves we’re looking for.

Here's the latest list:...

From the Desk of Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

A major theme we've witnessed in recent weeks is a shift in leadership as sector rotation continues to spread across the US equity market.

One could argue it is more a general broadening of the rally than it is rotation.

Regardless, one of the major beneficiaries has been Materials.

With commodity markets getting back in gear, industry groups from copper and steel to agricultural inputs are showing strength again.

With broad participation beneath the surface, this is a group we want to be adding long exposure too in the coming days and weeks.