Since November, the market has been grinding lower, and most cryptos find themselves in 50%-plus drawdowns.

There's no other way to put it: The altcoins have been bruised and battered.

It's at these stages of the market cycle that we analyze the names in the shallowest drawdowns.

When everything else is down the dumps, the few names that have bucked the selling pressure, and are even pressing against new highs are likely your next leaders when the broad selling subsides.

This is exactly what we've done.

We've filtered our universe of cryptos (all coins above $500M in market cap) by their drawdown from 52-week highs as well as their respective performance from Bitcoin's January lows and since war broke out between Ukraine and Russia.

Here's a snippet of the top 10 strongest names by drawdown from their respective 52-week highs:

You can download the full scan below:

The market has been a mess and off late the geopolitical turmoil has been playing havoc as well. Metals have shown strength over the past week and that has been our area of focus. This week's long trade comes from the Metals segment.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!

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.

As investors we get the option.

You can either profit and help your family because of higher energy and commodities costs.

Or you can complain about it.

I've been through enough cycles at this point, that there will always be that group who just complains and complains.

But for those of you who are proactive, and took advantage of the trends in place, then there's really nothing to complain about.

To the contrary, these are great days! Some of the best days, in fact.

It's funny, because you have those people who bought into that scam of so called "passive" investing. It's ridiculous that some investors still fall for that old trap.

Just because you buy and hold major indexes doesn't make you a "passive" investor. You have to be really really really bad at math to believe that.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We’ve had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn’t have to be a Russell component–it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and...

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...

With VIX closing the day today north of 30, I'm still on the hunt for premium selling opportunities.

So as always, I perused my list of the most liquid options ETFs and found an opportunity where premiums are elevated and the chart suggests some rangebound trading action is likely over the next few weeks.

The day got away from me so I didn't get a chance to put it on yet, but I've identified a delta neutral candidate that I'll be looking to enter in the early going tomorrow AM.

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.

High Yield Holds The Line

Below is a chart of the S&P 500 overlaid with the High-Yield Bonds versus Treasuries ratio. HYG/IEI is one of our favorite ways to analyze risk appetite. As you can see, the ratio has been building a topping formation since last year and has threatened to violate the lower bounds on many occasions. Last week was no exception as we saw more selling pressure, but ultimately, buyers regained control and successfully defended this level. Seeing this relative trend hold is solid evidence that this is a tradable low for US equities.  Falling prices for the HYG/IEI ratio tends to coincide with volatility for risk assets while a rising ratio is normal during bull market environments. Since last year, this ratio hasn’t given us much information as it has been trending sideways in a range. But with so many risk assets resolving lower recently, the fact that it continues to hold its range is one...

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 green as 60% of our list closed higher with a median return of 0.44%.
• Lumber $LB was the winner, closing with a 3.34% gain.
• The biggest loser was Emerging Markets $EEM, with a weekly loss of -2.81%.
• There was a 9% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 26%.
• 21% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs, 9% made new 13-week...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaways:

• In an effort to fight inflation, the Fed is likely to accept volatility but will be wary of stress.
• Equity market trends are deteriorating.
• Preserve capital and sanity - market doesn’t hand out participation medals.

Offsetting this likely need for more aggressive tightening is the potential for sanctions to strain the financial system in unexpected ways. When liquidity gets disrupted signs of stress can emerge. A widening in high yield spreads and/or a breakdown in the ratio between high yield bond and Treasury ETFs would be evidence that volatility is morphing into stress. That could slow the pace at which the Fed tightens and in the process worsen the problem of inflation.

Since last week's report, war has broken out between Ukraine and Russia.

This has been the dominant driver of recent price action in risk assets, Bitcoin and crypto included.

We're still positioned heavily in cash, with little crypto exposure.

Particularly with the geopolitical volatility we've seen over the last week and the resulting impact on global markets, this remains an aggressive tape to be actively trading.

Sitting out remains the most prudent option for the vast majority of traders.