From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Last week we held our January Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Incoming economic data has been weaker than expected but our Macro Health Status report suggests the market is looking past current risks to brighter days - or perhaps it’s just whistling past the graveyard.

Why It Matters: On its surface, incoming data is consistent with recession. Aggregate hours worked in the economy are shrinking, real retail sales and industrial production are contracting and housing market activity remains a shambles. The Leading Economic Index from the Conference Board is signaling that a recession is on its way - and it has an unblemished record in this regard. But we are not seeing evidence of building stress across our macro indicators. The longer the incoming data disappoints and the longer the Fed feeds the economy a starvation diet of liquidity (M2 is declining at a never before seen pace...

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.

Consumers Favor Discretionary

The Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary vs. Equal Weight Consumer Staples ratio is resolving higher from a rounding bottom reversal pattern. Seeing this ratio make an upside resolution is a characteristic of bull markets as it indicates offensive positioning by investors and supports higher prices for risk assets.

From the Desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

I have to get this off my chest.

Wherever I look on Twitter, people are complaining about this rally.

They say it's manipulated.

They say it's all a conspiracy driven by Binance to get suckers to buy in before pulling the rug.

What's hilarious is that those same people were tilted when Alameda was around, arguing that they were manipulating the market.

Now Alameda's gone, they're looking for another scapegoat.

"My stops got hit, must've been Alameda."

No.

There isn't some random conspiracy entity chasing your stops.

You're just a shit trader.

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

With stocks off to a very strong start to the year, we're certainly setting ourselves up for a positive January.

There is still about a week left, but the S&P500 is already up 4.7% so far this month.

Historically, if we finish up, and it looks like the chances of that are high, then it bodes very well for stocks throughout the rest of the year.

The largest insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filing by EcoR1 Capital LLC, which reported a purchase of roughly $2.9 million in Zymeworks Inc $ZYME.

EcoR1 Capital also filed a Form 13G, disclosing a stake of 7.80% in the cancer biotech stock Janux Therapeutics $JANX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The futures are indicating lower this morning. A healthy digesting is warranted.

I'd like to see 396, roughly, held over the next few days on $SPY.

If we push past 402.70, then we can potentially see 405, the next level above.

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 20, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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 options...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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...

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.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was positive, with 51% of our list closing higher with a median return of 0.11%.
• Lumber $LB was the winner, closing with a 25.23% gain.
• The biggest loser was the Dow Jones Utilities $DJU, with a weekly loss of -2.83%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 11%.
• 47% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs, and 30%...

It's the weekly Gold Rush!

The intermarket landscape provides favorable conditions for precious metals as the US dollar experiences an unabated decline.

Check it out...