From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

It's mid-October and things are winding down in the garden. 

The greens have perked up as the weather has turned cooler. But attempts to ripen a few final tomatoes as the summer heat fades and the sun spends less and less time above the horizon is like waiting for Godot.

With peak garden season slowing down, I have enough time (and thyme) on my hands to reflect on what went well, and what went awry.

Those angry little gold buggers are finally starting to put some points on the board.

The lack of participation in Gold since last Spring has been something to witness. Every commodity on earth has skyrocketed, except for gold and other precious metals.

My argument is that maybe it's behaved that way because it's not a commodity. Maybe it's more of a currency, something I've always argued.

Right or wrong, call it whatever you want, it has done poorly since last summer of 2020.

And with the Dollar as strong as it's been, Gold has really taken a beating.

But not lately....

Can we call it a comeback?

You see, with new highs in the US Dollar this month, Gold did NOT make new lows. That bullish divergence is the first sign of life we've seen out of this thing for a while.

Here we're looking at the...

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I'm going to be sharing you some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

Here's the thing about options trading: you can make it as complicated as your heart's content. And there are plenty of incredibly smart practitioners out there who run amazingly complex strategies involving all kinds of volatility and statistical arbitrage.

They analyze 3D volatility surface graphs, use lesser understood greeks, and interpret things like "volatility smile" and dispersion.

If that works for you, great! I always say: if it works, do more of it!

But another beautiful thing about options trading is that there are many different ways to pull profits out of the market, and most of them aren't as complicated as they may sound -- even if the strategies have exotic sounding names like "iron condor" or "broken-wing butterfly."

And my absolute favorite options strategy isn't even really a strategy at all -- it's simply buying long calls when I'm bullish!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we’ve been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It’s really been working for us!

One way we’re doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn’t just end there. We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

We’re beginning to see signs that risk-on behavior is re-entering the market.

Commodities are ripping in the face of a rising dollar.

Cyclical stocks are back in gear as the S&P 500 High Beta ETF $SPHB posts higher highs and higher lows relative to its low-volatility alternative $SPLV.

Meanwhile, classic risk-appetite barometer AUD/JPY sliced through a critical level of former support-turned-resistance earlier this week.

All of these point to an increasing risk-on environment. 

But what does the bond market have to say about investor positioning toward risk?

Let’s look at a couple credit spreads that speak to investors’ willingness to incur risk.

First, we have the Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF $LQD relative to the US Treasury Bond ETF $IEF:

Investment-grade...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Optimism has been unwound, but pessimism remains scarce. We have yet to see a level of fear associated with a complete unwind in sentiment. Still, risks loom overhead with earnings season heating up and the prospect of disappointing news on the horizon. The tailwinds that have accompanied the market for the past 15-months have dissipated. Analysts no longer revise expectations higher, and breadth is weak with more new lows than new highs across the NYSE and Nasdaq combined. Caution could quickly turn into nervousness and fear without a supportive backdrop in the event less than stellar news ushers in price volatility. It’s important to remember that sentiment resets slowly then all at once. We’ve been through the slow part. Now it’s time to see if the market can withstand a potential bout of disappointment.  

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Growth Expectations Making the Turn

Earnings season gets plenty of attention - most of it (in my...

Some of us were discussing internally today's topic.

After a few minutes, we were stumped.

The market hasn't given us much to write about over the last week.

And that's fine. If the market isn't giving you anything new, don't spend your day looking at the screen for something that isn't there.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why we’re turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we’re curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are “stocks that pay you to make money.” Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum & relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

By adding our...

What's the one thing that's on everyone's mind today? What has caught your attention today? Or rather, what has demanded your attention today?

The Tata Group of course! Such a move hasn't come along in this group in the longest time. A post dedicated to this group is definitely the need of the hour.

The Tata Group is synonymous with Trust, Integrity, and Loyalty. There is a certain feel-good factor added to the group based on the people at the helm and their activities. While there is a place for everything, once you look at price action, nothing else matters.

That's the beauty of Technical Analysis I guess. It encompasses all possible pieces of information and presents to you a price level that reflects everything. Quite powerful, when you really think about it.

So here we are today, taking a look at a reputable conglomerate that has been making money for investors for years together!

Since there are so many constituents in this group, I don't think it qualifies to be a Solar System. I feel it's a whole Universe by itself.

So what do we like in this universe at the moment?

Let's take a look, shall we?

We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. This time around, we have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to generate great returns.

While we go through our lists of sectors and stocks on a weekly basis, we thought of launching a product that would highlight the names that are the strongest performers in our universe and those that are primed for an explosive move.

Just like The Outperformers scan, this is a list of stocks belonging to the sectors that display relative strength in the market at any given point in time. Since sector rotation is the lifeblood of a bull market, we will be ahead of the curve before the gears keep shifting.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Crude oil is at its highest level since 2014 after it took out resistance around 76. 

Energy stocks just ripped off of support and are back above a key level of resistance, trading at highs not seen since early 2020.

Economically sensitive commodities and cyclical stocks, in general, remain very well bid. 

Meanwhile, the mainstream media is hung up on narratives surrounding stagflation and the possibility of a global recession. But we’re just not seeing this at all when we look at price. 

Risk assets are performing as well as they have all year. And, when we look outside the US, while there’s definitely been selling pressure around the world, the areas that stick out all seem to have something in common.

The energy-dependent countries are showing leadership. 

This supports the recent price action from energy futures and stocks, many of which have been ripping to fresh highs.

In today’s post, we'll take a look at some international equities we can use to express a bullish thesis on higher oil prices -- and higher prices for risk assets more broadly.

In...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

All eyes have been on the US dollar as it presses to new 52-week highs.

But its recent rally hasn’t been accompanied by the usual risk-off behavior we’d expect. Actually, it’s been quite the opposite.

Bonds have been rolling over, commodities and cyclical stocks continue to march higher, and the yen can’t catch a bid.

To us, the evidence suggests the USD is momentarily decoupling from its classic intermarket relationships as it grinds higher in the face of all this.

If the US dollar is out of sync with the action in other asset classes, where can we look within the currencies market for a clear perspective of investors’ attitudes toward risk?

That’s right... the yen!

Let’s look at a couple of charts highlighting the Japanese yen’s weakness and discuss what it means for the current market environment.

First up is the classic risk-appetite barometer, the AUD/JPY cross:

...