As we progress into Q4 of Fiscal Year 2021-2022, this playbook outlines our thoughts on every asset class and our plan to profit.

This playbook will cover our macro view, touching on Equities, Commodities, Currencies, and Rates, as well as outline our views on the major nifty indices and the sector/thematic indices.

We also cover individual stocks we want to be buying to take advantage of the themes discussed in the playbook.

This week we’re looking at a long setup in the sugar stock, which remained resilient in market drawdown.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 21, 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.

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.

Every bear market has a culprit.

There's always that one sector or group of stocks that drags the rest of them down.

In 2007, for example, it was Financials and Homebuilders. In 2000, of course, it was Tech and Growth.

This time around, it's been Small-cap Growth, and overall underperformance from Growth in general.

But these 4 are the ones we've been pointing to as good representations of this cycle's culprit, or potential culprit anyway. You never actually know until afterwards.

Since stocks peaked last February, the evidence has been pretty clear that these are the ones that paint the best picture of what's been going on over the past year:

This is probably as good of a time as ever to get back to basics.

Let's try to remember what this is all about.

What the hell are we doing here anyway?

I won't speak on your behalf, but I'll tell you the way I look at it.

The reason Technical Analysis works is because we're identifying trends.

And Prices trend.

I get to talk to traders and investors of all shapes and sizes every day of my life. This is something I like to do for fun, and it's also a great way to learn. But remember, I do this for a living. So not a day goes by where I'm not talking to market participants.

This has gone on for decades now. Everyone from the largest banks and hedge funds on the planet to recent grads first learning how to trade.

I have a lot of conversations with these investors. And one common theme I've heard over the past few months is just how difficult of an environment this currently is.

A lot of traders are getting chopped up in this mess of a market. And it's not anything new, it's been messy for quite some time.

So you're not alone in this.

Please don't think you are.

Bonds & Commodities. That's what the stock market bulls still have left.

But why do Futures matter to stock traders and investors?

Because the bond market and commodities market combined are waaaaay bigger than the stock market.

It starts with the information we're getting from futures markets, and then it trickles down to everything else from there.

With the stock market losing key support in the Nasdaq, S&P500, Small-caps, Transports and Bitcoin, what's left?

I think these 2 are what the bulls have left....

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

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

The bull market for commodities is alive and well. They were the top-performing asset class last year, and they’re kicking off the new year with a lead once again. 

The energy-heavy CRB Index is printing new seven-year highs, and our ASC Equal-Weight Commodity Index just resolved from a nine-month base to its highest level since 2013.

To take advantage of this area of leadership, we’ve been highlighting strength and outlining long ideas in a variety of commodity markets.

We know not everyone has access to the futures markets, and that’s OK, because there are plenty of opportunities to express a bullish thesis on commodities through the equity market.

To make this easier, we’ve put together a universe of stocks that offer investors exposure to a wide array of different commodities.

Let’s dive in and talk about some of them.

Here’s our Natural Resource Stocks table:

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 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:

Asset prices trend. We know that.

It's why technical analysis works.

Price changes for stocks, rates, commodities and even crytpos move in trends. They're not random.

We know this. It's not a secret.

So we should respect the behavior of the market. Not stick to narratives the lead to poor risk management.