Silver futures slide to multi-month lows, undercutting a critical shelf of former support.

Regardless, we believe precious metals and their related stocks ultimately resolve higher, printing fresh all-time highs.

But before we can put money behind this bullish thesis, interest rates and the US dollar need to stop rising.

Check it out:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Silver futures have undercut a critical shelf of former lows.

I find it difficult to hold a bullish bias for precious metals and mining stocks, at least from a tactical perspective.

And when I zoom out to longer time frames, overhead supply looms large across the entire space.

Understand, I believe precious metals and their related stocks ultimately resolve higher, printing fresh all-time highs. 

But before we can put money behind this bullish thesis, these next three charts need to throw it in reverse…

It's the weekly commodity edition of What the FICC?

Coffee, cocoa, and OJ are all ripping higher.

So can we extend an underlying bullish thesis for ag commodities to the grain contracts traded on the CBOT?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Regardless, I want to be prepared if and when the Chicago grain markets break out…

It's the weekly bond edition of What the FICC?

The narrative is quickly shifting back to tighter monetary policy following last week’s higher-than-anticipated CPI and strong economic data.

With these newfound recessionary fears circulating, I want to share a chart I like to avoid… The 2s10s treasury spread.

In some market environments Technology, and other sectors full of growth stocks, tend to outperform.

Usually interest rates are falling in that type of market.

You got a good dose of that for about decade.

US Stocks were the global leaders while Europe and other parts of the world, without that exposure to growth, made little progress.

See here.

And now with interest rates rising, other sectors have emerged as leaders. Industrials, for example.

This is all perfectly normal for this type of environment. We've seen it before, and to expect...

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Earlier this week we held our February Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I can’t stop talking about the softs trading on the NYMEX.

Coffee, cocoa, and OJ are all ripping higher. It seems only a matter of time before sugar and cotton join the fun.  

So can we extend an underlying bullish thesis for ag commodities to the grain contracts traded on the CBOT?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Regardless, I want to be prepared if and when the Chicago grain markets break out…

Let’s review the most actively traded contracts for corn and the soybean complex. First up…

Corn

Here’s the May corn futures contract:

There are two ways to play it.

You could buy strength above 684, targeting 765. Or you could sell weakness on a break below 639, targeting 575.

Both work. It just depends on the next directional move.

“Hey, Ian, it seems like you’re cruising for a bruising at these...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that which you can check out here.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. 

Then...

Wall Street analysts keep raising their estimates.

This, of course, is happening as the prices of these stocks keep on going up.

This is classic behavior for bull markets.

You can see the revisions trend rising as the price of the S&P500 keeps heading higher:

From the Desk of Ian Culley 

Rates continue to rise along with concerns of an impending recession.

The narrative is quickly shifting back to tighter monetary policy following last week’s higher-than-anticipated CPI and strong economic data. I don’t pay too much attention to this gossip. But I do keep a pulse on the latest discourse surrounding markets.

With these newfound recessionary fears circulating, I want to share a chart I like to avoid… The 2s10s treasury spread.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote about the yield curve. It’s been so inverted (deepest inversion since the early 80s) for so long that I honestly don’t know what to think.

Nevertheless, the overlay chart of the Staples sector $XLP relative to the S&P 500 $SPY with the 2s10s spread conveys an important piece of information:

Despite an inverted yield curve, the relative downtrend in staples remains intact. 

Why does this matter?

Defensive leadership (a...

It sounds so simple.

To win at trading means to take profits.

If there are no profits taken, there is no winning. And if there is no winning, then what am I even doing here?

Subscribers to the various options education services we provide at All Star Charts know that I’m usually very clear about where I’ll take profits in the various trades I put on. Most trades have a profit target and I set the GTC limit orders out in the market and let them get hit. I’m hands-off. Unemotional.

So it would seem that I’m pretty automatic about this practice of profit-taking in all realms of the market in which I engage.

You might be surprised that this hasn’t been true in my personal index options trading.