From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Crude Oil has been the Lone Ranger within the energy complex since early June, relentlessly pushing to new highs while other energy-related commodities have been stuck below overhead supply.
But that’s all changing this week as Heating Oil and Gasoline just broke above key resistance levels to new multi-year highs.
The recent strength from Energy also comes as Base Metals continue to cool off and correct. Copper, Tin, and Aluminum are all rangebound below logical levels of resistance after explosive moves off their 2020 lows. This is yet further evidence of the bifurcated market environment we're in right now. All we can do is focus on finding opportunities in areas that are trending... So, let's talk more about Energy.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Earlier in the week, we held our June Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting 5 of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley
There’s no question the landscape in the currency market has dramatically changed with the US Dollar reasserting its dominance in recent weeks.
You can read more about this in our weekly currency post, but here’s an excerpt with the long and short of it:
King dollar is definitely back in the driver’s seat from a tactical viewpoint as we’ve seen a significant shift in favor of USD over the near term. But even the intermediate and long-term trends for most major FX pairs have flipped in the direction of the Dollar over the past month or so.
Considering this broad-based strength, it’s clear that bulls are back in control of the Dollar… at least from a near-term perspective.
So, earlier in the week we analyzed the US Dollar Index $DXY and outlined some critical levels to watch over the short run.
Something we’ve been working on internally is using various 'bottoms-up' tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.
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 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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge.
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?
And the market quickly answered with a resounding, YES!
We’ve highlighted several currency pairs challenging crucial levels of support and resistance. Last week, we saw the USD take control at those key levels.
Both the EUR/USD and GBP/USD turned away from critical areas of former support turned resistance. The USD/CAD moved sharply higher from a major area of support. The AUD/USD broke back below a key retracement level after consolidating for the first half of the year. And the NZD/USD retreated from an area of overwhelming overhead supply.
Responses were mixed but skewed in the bearish direction.
The point of our exercise was to question whether buyers would have the power to push prices back above our risk level… or if sellers would follow-through and validate the pattern breakdown.
If the former was to be true, we’d have a “bull-hook” formation on our hands. Some might call it a “bear-trap”. Either way, it’s bullish.
But that’s not what has happened at all. Since our mystery post, sellers have taken control as prices continued to collapse lower.
We’re now looking at a decisive violation of our risk level. Let’s dive in to see what’s really going on and discuss why this chart is so important!
This is one of our favorite bottoms-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.
We've already had some great trades come out of this Smallcap-focused column since we launched it late last year and began rotating it with our flagship bottoms-up scan, "Under The Hood."
To make the cut for our Minor Leagues list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. After applying price and liquidity filters, we simply sort by proximity to new highs in order to focus on the best players.
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 context of the big picture 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.
Our Top 10 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.
Using Caterpillar And Copper As A Risk Barometer
On the topic of high-beta names, here’s a behemoth from the Industrial sector. We think of Caterpillar as an index in and of itself - a barometer for global economic growth, reflation, cyclicality, etc. It’s all reflected in CATs stock price, as it is highly correlated with risk assets such as Copper and Emerging Markets. The stock recently made its first lower low in over a year, suggesting we continue to approach these offensive areas with caution. We’ll be watching to see if Copper, and others... even risk-on forex pairs like the Aussie/Yen, will continue to follow Caterpillar’s path. How much structural damage is endured before we get a tradeable bottom in these assets will provide us valuable insight regarding the future market environment for risk-taking.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Whether you trade commodities or not, it’s been impossible to ignore the recent sell-off in Lumber, as prices have collapsed almost 30% in just the last month.
Well, let’s just say we got a lot more than that! Sometimes markets correct or consolidate through time, and sometimes they correct through price.
And Lumber is most definitely correcting through price!
But Lumber is not the only procyclical commodity to enter a corrective phase. More recently, DR. Copper has begun to digest its recent gains through price as well.
These corrections have already done some damage to the primary uptrends at play as both of these economically sensitive commodities have recently violated critical support levels.