Risk environment is still cautious as downtrends linger.
Macro situation is a concern but has not been causing stress.
Breadth thrusts are firing, participation is expanding and for the first time this year new high lists are longer than new low lists. From the perspective of market internals, the rally over the past two months could hardly have been stronger.
This strength is showing up in our bull market re-birth checklist. July brought upside volume thrusts and the first breadth thrust (based on the percentage of stocks making new 20-day highs) in over two years. Last week brought to an end the string of 37 consecutive weeks of more new lows than new highs on the NYSE+NASDAQ. The trend in our net new high advance/decline line also turned higher.
Our bull market re-birth checklist has now had 4 out of 5 the criteria met. While this does...
Broadly speaking, risk assets have caught a well-received bid over the last few weeks. This recent period has proven to be an incredibly risk-on tape.
When it comes to crypto, the big narrative driving capital markets seems to be the upcoming Ethereum $ETH merge. This update will see the network move away from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) framework.
Of course, as technicians, we naturally follow money flow as opposed to getting stuck in the weeds of narratives. It's quite clear to see traders are bidding Ethereum leading into the merge in what looks like a "buy the rumor, sells the news" event.
The most significant insider activity on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by QH Hungary Holdings Ltd, which reported purchases worth roughly $9.2 million in Quaker Chemical $KWR.
The firm now owns 4,440,989 shares, representing a roughly 22.50% ownership stake.
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.
These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.
It has all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.
The Hall of Famers is simple.
We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.
Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.
Here’s this week’s list:
Click table to enlarge view
We filtered out any laggards that are down 5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.
While many started to pay attention to the potential for equity market weakness well after the S&P 500 peaked back in January, a look beneath the surface showed that trouble had been brewing for a while. The percentage of stocks in the S&P indexes that were 20% or more below their highs stopped retreating in March of 2021 and started to rise over the second half of 2021. That intensified over the first half of 2022 and crescendoed to a peak in mid-June (at which point between 75% and 85% of stocks were in drawdowns of 20% or more). The pattern of higher highs and higher lows in this measure of stock market weakness is now being challenged. Already fewer stocks in the mid-cap S&P 400 are in 20% drawdowns than was the case in early June. Small-caps and large-caps aren’t far behind. Before sustained strength, we usually experience waning weakness. And that is what we are seeing right now.