From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why we’re turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we’re curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are “stocks that pay you to make money.” Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

By adding our technical...

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

The US Dollar Index $DXY is pressing to new highs, disregarding what many think it should be doing based on historic intermarket relationships.

Considering the bullish developments and new highs from risk assets, the strength from the US dollar continues to be a head-scratcher.

But will the breakout in the DXY hold, or will it roll over and confirm the signals coming from bonds, stocks, and commodities?

When we broke down the US Dollar Index last month, we pointed out that its strength was rather narrow in terms of how it was performing relative to most individual currencies. Long story short, the recent rally in DXY has been fueled primarily by its two largest components -- the euro and the yen. These two currencies make up more than 70% of the DXY weighting, and the fact that they are at new 52-week lows explains why the index is at new highs.

But we're still not seeing the same kind...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood" column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended November 12, 2021. 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.

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.

Watch this video for a "...

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. What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind… and they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

• This week, our macro universe was negative as 68% of our list closed lower with a median return of -0.38%.
• US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the big winner, closing out the week with more than an 8% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a weekly loss of -12.18%
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 70%.
• 15% made new 4-week lows.
• Meanwhile, 21%%...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

The Bond Market Has the Answers

Another potential bearish development that is on our radar right now is continued pressure on the long end of the yield curve. While the short end has held up much better, we’ve seen long-duration rates crumble back toward their summer lows over the last month or so. While treasury spreads have contracted and the curve has flattened a bit since the summer, we don’t find these developments too concerning considering where yields have come from since last summer. It’s only normal for the short-end to play catch up a bit in a rising rate environment. Although, what bulls definitely do not want to see, is yields break down to new lows on an absolute basis. Since the long end is moving the fastest, the weakness will show up there first. As such, we’re watching the 30-Year US Yield very closely as it retests its key summer lows. It appears to have found support there for now....

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 50 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 50 largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

Commodities are streaking higher, providing plenty of alpha across the entire space to anyone who can pry their eyes away from their altcoin charts.

Cotton and coffee continue to rip. Crude oil and the energy space are grinding higher. Live cattle are breaking out. Even precious metals are starting to catch a bid.

But what about the grain market? Last week, we pointed out that our Minneapolis Wheat position had hit our target and that it was time to feed the ducks.

Today, we’re going to highlight a couple of grain contracts we want to keep on our radar for buying opportunities in the coming weeks and months.

Let’s dive in!

First up is the March 2022 corn contract:

Like many other cyclical assets, corn futures peaked in May and have since been chopping sideways in a broad range. As the consolidation continues to develop, price has repeatedly found...

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

Everything's falling into place for the bulls.

Mid-caps and small-caps finally joined their large-cap peers at new record highs earlier this month. A bullish expansion in breadth is confirming these breakouts at the index level.

We're also seeing strong confirmation in the form of other risk assets resolving above key levels of interest.

As suspected, our risk checklist has moved up to its highest level since we began tracking it this summer. This list does an excellent job summarizing the global landscape.

Here’s a look at where things stand presently:

What we’ve done here is pinpoint critical levels in some of the most risk-on markets and relative ratios in order to gauge the current level of risk appetite.

Whether these charts are above or below our levels is...

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

Last week, we touched on the weakness that’s been developing further out on the yield curve.

The long end simply hasn’t kept pace with shorter-term yields. This is understandable given the magnitude of the move in the 30-year since summer 2020. At some point, the shorter end of the curve needs to play catch up. And it’s done just that these past couple months.

Now it’s time to focus on longer-term rates, as further downside pressure will eventually put the current economic recovery into question.

Let’s put the recent action in rates into perspective as we head into year’s end.

Below is a chart of the US 30-year yield:

After testing a key level of former support turned resistance around 2.23, it’s slipped back toward its summer lows.

If the 30-year yield continues to fall and takes out its former lows around 1.78 that does not bode well for...

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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this...

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza

*** Click here to read the reveal post for this Mystery Chart ***

Check out our latest Mystery Chart!

What we do here is take a chart that’s captured our attention, and remove the x and y-axes as well as any other labels that could help identify it.

This chart can be of any security, in any asset class, on any timeframe. Sometimes it’s an absolute price chart, other times it’s on a relative basis.

It might be a ratio, a custom index, or maybe the price is inverted. It could be all three!

The point is, when we aren’t able to recognize what’s in front of us, we put aside any biases we may have and scrutinize the price behavior objectively.

While you can try to guess the chart, the point is to make a decision…

So, let us know what it is… Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?