From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key takeaway: Evidence of excessive optimism abounds. Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal provide anecdotes for the data: Conservative German savers are increasing their exposure to stocks and investors in the US are crowding into the market, focusing more on chasing returns than managing risks. Cyclical views trend and strategic positioning point to elevated risks but stocks have been buoyed by a favorable news backdrop (positive economic data surprises and upward earnings revisions) and resilient breadth. If these falter and investor appetite for risk fades, those areas of the market where speculative fever has burned the hottest could be the most vulnerable.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Long Equity Camp Crowded

Household equity exposure finished last year near record levels. Preliminary data suggests it has now exceeded its previous peaks. There is a strong inverse correlation between...

A funny thing happened last week.

Copper prices closed the month at the exact price where it closed in February of 2011, right before it proceeded to get cut in half.

If Base Metals were to correct, wouldn't this be a logical place for it to occur?

It sure feels like a long time ago now, but it's been less than a decade since the European Union underwent a rather serious sovereign debt crisis.

This set off a roughly two year bear market for International Stocks as well as a rangebound mess for US stocks.

After this bout of volatility, most risk-assets carved out significant lows in 2016 and rallied higher until global risk peaked in 2018. Then it all fell apart again last year.

This brings us to today, where we're now seeing European countries and indexes trade right back up to their 2018 or pre-COVID highs left and right.

While diversified global indexes like MSCI EAFE $EFA and MSCI Europe $VGK recently reclaimed their former highs from 2014, 2018, and are already well above their pre-COVID peaks - they are now approaching a far more important area of overhead resistance at their pre-financial crisis highs.

Last week, we used the BRIC countries $BKF to illustrate this theme of more and more international indexes trading at inflection points. Today, we'll do the same...

This is the video recording of our May 3, 2021 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest "Under The Hood” column for the week ended April 30, 2021. This column is published bi-weekly and rotated on-and-off with our Minor Leaguers column.

In this column, we 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.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers… there is a lot of overlap.

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: New monthly highs reflect broad participation and a healthy rally. Stocks struggle to celebrate blowout quarters if future growth prospects are not bright. Elevated expectations bar could leave stocks & the economy victims of their own success.

Sector-level leadership is unchanged in this week’s relative strength rankings. Materials, Industrials, Financials and Real Estate held down the top four spots for the second week in a row. Choppiness and rotation continue outside of that group. Rotation can also be seen in our industry group heat map. Improving conditions are widespread at the large-cap level and deteriorating conditions are widespread at the small-cap level (see page 5 for a chart version of this rotation). Mid-cap groups dominate the top of our industry group rankings (holding seven of the top ten spots).

SpaceX has made it cool to talk and dream about Space again. I'm sure many of you, like me, had dreams of being an Astronaut and walking on the moon when you were growing up.

Now that I've grown up, I dream of stocks going on rocket ship rides to the moon. Same difference ;)

This week we're looking at a long setup in the Metal sector. There are a handful of sectors that are outperforming the market as Nifty 50 continues to move sideways, and Metal has been a consistent name there.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in mid-July 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.

I've caught myself talking more and more about Cryptocurrencies since last Summer.

And there's a reason for that.

We like buying things that are going up in price, and selling (or not buying) the things going down.

That's really it.

You guys who have been around for a while remember me writing about, commenting and informing readers about Bitcoin back in 2016. I was talking about Crypto trading then even more than I am now. In fact, if you knew me back in 2014, I probably sent you some bitcoin as a gift. I was into doing that sort of thing back then.

BUT, in between 2018 and 2020 there wasn't really much to do in that space, so I stayed quiet and focused my efforts and attention elsewhere, like in Technology and Growth stocks for example.

More recently, we've been pounding the table about Bitcoin since...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 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.

On a global scale, recent weakness has primarily been isolated to the Asia-Pacfic region. This region has in large part been weighed down by the Large-Cap Growth-heavy Chinese market; while many indices have decisively accelerated to the upside in recent months, China is still painfully below its YTD highs.

From our perspective, given the economic significance of China, we need to see buyers defend this key 45 level in the iShares China Large-Cap ETF. In this sense, the resolution from this level will likely dictate the bias for global markets in the coming weeks and months.

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 context of the big picture 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.