The market is messy and continues to remain so. There are only a select few names that are displaying the strength with consistency. In a messy market, that's the best area to focus on.

Read on to know more.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

Key Takeaway:

• 2022 gives investors no place to hide.
• Stocks do well when rates rise slowly - an aggressive Fed is a headwind for investors.
• Hard to argue that a bear market has run its course when more stocks are making new lows than new highs.

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 April 29, 2022. 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 behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large...

The risks and key themes we discussed in our last crypto report remain unchanged.

Price action has been chopping in the high 30,000s, and there's little to update.

We're closely monitoring the tight trading correlations to traditional finance. Despite strong spot flows, this remains the most pressing driver of price action to date.

With few actionable opportunities, we're sitting back and weighing the probabilities of a number of scenarios.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by George Simeon, director of Nkarta Inc $NKTX, who reported a $10 million purchase.

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.

Then we flip through our list of stocks flashing unusual...

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.

Indexes Hit New Lows

We’re seeing more and more stocks and indexes resolve lower from distribution patterns and violate critical support levels. Many more are on the brink, challenging pivot lows and threatening to follow their path.

The Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) and Russell 2000 (IWM) are excellent examples of this as both are violating their recent lows and resolving to the downside. We’re paying extra special attention to these patterns as their breakdown levels coincide with the AVWAPs from the COVID lows. These levels represent the price the average investor has paid for shares since March 2020, making them logical potential support zones.

Now that these indexes have taken out the confluence of support at their pivot lows, we’re likely to see further downside and increased volatility. Bulls need to come out and repair this damage immediately.

...

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 was another rough week for our macro universe as 79% of our list closed lower with a median return of -2.32%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the big winner again this week, booking an 18.40% gain.
• The biggest loser was Silver $SI, with a weekly loss of -5.02%.
• There was a 6% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 11%.
• Only 9% of our macro list made fresh 4-...

This is the video recording of our May 1, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday May 3rd @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday evening: