From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The Bloomberg commodity index $BCOM is breaking down, approaching fresh 52-week lows.

Somehow Gold and Copper didn’t get the memo. They must be too busy printing new highs.

But when we review other major commodity indexes (including our own equal-weight index of 33 individual contracts), they look poised to roll over.

Check out the triple pane chart of the Bloomberg, CRB, and our equal-weight commodity indexes:

It’s interesting to note the differences between these indexes. The weighting structures vary, as do their support levels. But the CRB index and our equal-weight commodity index challenge their 2022 lows while the BCOM has undercut its respective lows. 

Will the other indexes follow BCOM lower, completing major tops? Or will the Bloomberg index reverse higher, holding above former support?

I don’t know. No one does. But that’s not the key takeaway from this chart. Instead, this chart tells me I...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our annual edition of Young Aristocrats.

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 and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend...

It's a new year with new leaders emerging in the market. So what better time to drop in and chat with our friends over on Fox Business about what's going on.

Charles likes my Ratio charts so we took a look at some of those.

But I think the bigger point here is that Gold doesn't have to be this 'End of the world' trade that some make it out to be.

History has proven time and time again that Gold prices can rise, even during bull markets for stocks. And to be clear, Gold prices can also fall along with stocks.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Check out the full clip and let me know what you think!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our January Monthly Strategy Session Tuesday night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

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

Today we're highlighting potential failed breakouts in European benchmark rates.

Check it out!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @Ianculley

Whether you’re looking across the curve or around the world, interest rates continue to rise.

Benchmark rates in Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal hit fresh multi-year highs last week. Interestingly, the US 10-year yield did not. And neither did the two-, 5-, or 30-year yields.

I’m not claiming US yields have put in a lower high. It’s far too early to assume that. A downside resolution below last month’s pivot lows needs to materialize before making that claim.

Nevertheless, the lack of confirmation from US interest rates is intriguing, especially as European yields turn lower this week.

Check out the triple-pane chart of Developed European 10-year yields (Germany, France, and Spain):

All three broke above their respective Oct. highs, finishing 2022 on a high note. But those breakouts were short-lived as yields are sliding lower this week. 

The lackluster moves from European yields suggest...

Another Santa Claus Rally is officially in the books.

This year the S&P500 rallied 0.80% during the period, which is more than 3 times the historical returns for all the other 7 day periods throughout the year.

You can learn more about the SCR in this note from last month.

OK so great, Santa showed up. So what?

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 list at some point during their journey...

Happy New Year everyone. How are you playing it?

This morning, our analyst team was bouncing ideas around when I posed the group this question:

"It's the beginning of a new year. Do we want to continue buying strength (as we have been)? Or do we want to buy some well-selected dips on stocks in sectors we like?"

In other words, what's our appetite?

The prevailing sentiment that won out was that we have been buying strength -- and that has worked well in some areas, particularly homebuilders, Chinese stocks, and metals stocks. But the reward-to-risk opportunities right now may be more favorable in the "buy-the-dip" camp.

So with this in mind, let's take a look at a stock in the semiconductors sector that has our attention.

Doing some basic math, the odds continue to favor a strong year for stocks in 2023.

There are some people out there who think the Nasdaq is the stock market. There are others who "only buy growth stocks".

I don't know what kind of masochist you need to be to think that way, but both of those are very foolish approaches to life.

The Nasdaq is full of growth stocks. And growth stocks historically underperform and make little progress when interest rates are rising. I'm not sure if you heard, but interest rates have been rising!

Since the Stock Market bottomed in June, the majority of stocks and sectors are up and to the right. It's only the biggest losers that are down, and there aren't that many of them. It's really just those nasdaq / growthy stocks that the masochists are focused on.

This is the video recording of our January 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

It's the 2023 inaugural weekly currency edition of What the FICC?

And we're kicking it off with the US Dollar Index $DXY!

Check it out!