JC had a great blog post out this week about zooming out. In a nutshell, he was reminding us that zooming out and looking at price action from a wider lens often makes the present murky waters look suddenly clear. It's easy to get distracted by the day-to-day price action and to look at only the last few months of daily charts and conclude that a stock or an index is in one sloppy clusterjam of price action.

But when you look at that same price action, instead with weekly or monthly candles, the more recent ones will often look like insignificant noise in an otherwise smoothly trending longer term pattern.

In the post referenced above, JC shared several current examples of instruments that look sloppy recently, but the bigger picture is still sitting pretty.

One of the stocks he mentioned is currently giving us a nice pullback to get a nice entry on.

One of the hallmarks of the beginning stages of new trends, irrespective of asset class, is the thrust.

• Thrust: push suddenly or violently in a specified direction.

There are many different ways markets can thrust, but it's commonly one of two:

• momentum; or
• breadth.

In Monday's letter, we discussed that if Bitcoin could close in the green, it'd be the first time it's seen seven consecutive positive closes since the July short squeeze.

Fast-forward, we're now sitting on eight with a probability of nine green candles in a row:

Revolution Medicines $RVMD director Thilo Schroeder continues to appear on our list with another Form 4 filing.

He’s reported four separate purchases over the trailing month for a combined total of over $10 million.

Over the past half-decade or so, we've seen the US Dollar Index maintain a very high negative correlation with risk assets.

When stocks are doing well, the Dollar has normally been under pressure. And when stocks have struggled, as most of them have over the past year, the US Dollar has kept a bid.

Look how poorly the Dollar did when stocks ripped in 2020 off those pandemic lows. And then look at the strength in the Dollar over the last year as most stocks have struggled:

The team over at Fox Business asked me to come on this week to talk about what I'm seeing in the market.

In this short clip, I talk to Charles about the Sentiment unwind that we've been seeing and whether or not it's got legs.

I think it does.

Here's the interview in full. I come in at the 9:35 mark.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

Rates continue to move higher around the world as central banks do their best to combat inflation. 

As investors, our best course of action is to position ourselves in those areas that benefit most from rising rates.

Commodities and cyclical stocks immediately come to mind. But there are also specific currencies that tend to excel in rising rate environments.

Today, we'll discuss a handful of emerging-market currencies with heavy commodity exposure. 

We’ve been waiting on these currencies to catch higher and confirm the price action in commodities since last year… and it looks like it’s finally happening.

Let’s dive in.

First up is an overlay chart of the US 10-year yield and our equal-weight basket of EM commodity currencies:

As you can see, these currencies trend in the same direction as interest...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaways:

• 2022 poses an asset allocation challenge
• Commodities catching up, but a long way from being caught up
• Dynamic exposure allows trend following in a portfolio context

The first quarter still has two days of life left in it, though for many investors its end cannot come soon enough. The S&P 500 made a new high on the first day of the year, but has been underwater ever since. Bonds have been in the red all year, suffering their worst decline in decades. Commodities (and the minority of investors that have exposure there) enjoyed their best quarter in decades. 

Each of these asset classes has its own story and dominant theme from Q1. For stocks, it’s the longest stretch of more new lows than new highs since the financial crisis. For bonds, it’s that yields around the world are moving to their highest levels in years (US & German yields get a lot of attention...

Wait for your perfect pitch.

We say it all the time.

There are no called strikes on Wall Street. In other words, we’re not penalized for not swinging, like you are in baseball.

We have the ability to be patient, to a certain extent at least, depending on your mandate. But most of us don’t have mandates! Even one of the best hitters of all time struggled when he swung at bad pitches.

In this video from our Charting School, we compare Ted Williams’ batting average when he swung at good pitches versus when he swung at bad ones.

Why do we bring this up?

Well, what's the last few months been for crypto traders?

Tumbleweeds...

If you've been watching the tape and actively trading these markets in this messy tape, your probabilities of success have more than likely diminished. It's why we've discussed so few trades apart from a few standouts in this period.

We've been waiting for our perfect pitch.

But with the Bitcoin macro bear coming to an end, is this the time to start swinging?

We think so.

...

The largest insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filing by William Clay Ford Jr., the executive chair of Ford Motor $F, who reported a purchase of roughly $4.5 million.

Coliseum Capital Partners continues to build its position in GMS Inc $GMS, as it just filed its second Form 4 in the last week.

In today's video I sit down with Anne Harris, Client Success Manager at Magnifi.

So what is Magnifi?

How should we get started and begin using the platform?

Anne answers all of my questions and more in this short video about Magnifi, my favorite new investing search engine.

You can sign up for a Free Magnifi account using this link

Energy has made new all-time highs and today we have a long setup from the same sector.

A big name has joined the races and we're here to discuss just that.

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.