Recently I've been listening to a wider variety of music than I have in the past. It's by design.
Each week, I've assigned myself a little goal to listen to a new album. I set aside a few hours to actively listen and immerse myself in the music -- to relax, of course, but also to consider the themes and overall messages artists are trying to convey.
It's been fun, and I'm enjoying it immensely. And it's also helped me become a better writer and opened my outlook on life more broadly.
Music is powerful. I can't imagine life without it. And one particular track from my personal list of top 10 classic hip hop pieces of all time has been stuck in my head all day.
We got just a little bit of Dollar weakness starting in mid-July and stocks ripped higher. Thousands of points added to the Dow, Ethereum doubled and the average stock on the Nasdaq rallied over 40%.
We saw one of the most historic short-squeezes in history. And all it took was just a little bit of Dollar weakness. It wasn't even that much.
But then once that Dollar strength came back last month, the bid in stocks and crypto disappeared.
The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes in a 13D from Carl Icahn, who increased his ownership stake in Southwest Gas $SWX by 1%.
Icahn now owns 9.7% of outstanding shares, up from the 8.7% he reported on August 16.
Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 2, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers report.
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 behind-the-scenes look at our process.
Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options...
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...
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 negative, with 91% of our list closing lower with a median return of -2.99%.
The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the winner, closing with a 5.21% gain.
Copper $HG was the biggest loser, with a weekly loss of -7.45%.
There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.
Structural Trends Shift in Favor of Value
We just got fresh monthly candles for August last week. When we look at a monthly line chart of the growth vs value relationship, it’s hard to see anything but a recently completed double top formation and successful retest from below. The fact that this bearish reversal pattern is occurring at a critical level of interest at the dot-com bubble highs makes this price action even more significant. As long as this distribution pattern remains valid, we’re anticipating a structural reversal in this relative trend that favors value. And as shown in the upper pane, as far as the major averages are concerned, this means we want to overweight the value-heavy Dow Industrials and underweight tech-heavy indexes such as the Nasdaq 100.