From the Desk of Ian Culley @Ianculley

On Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Reserve announced another 75-basis-point rate hike following its September policy meeting. 

Yields across the curve ripped, and Treasury bonds dipped.

What else is new?

An aggressive hiking regime has been the Fed’s modus operandi since March. And it's made clear its intent to stay the course.

But what does the rest of the market think about the rise in rates?

Let’s look at our intermarket ratios to gain some insight.

First, we have a triple-pane chart of regional banks versus REITs, the copper/gold ratio, and the US 10-year yield:

These key intermarket ratios tend to peak and trough with interest rates. Notice all three peaked in 2018.

As rates roll over and growth slows, investors reach for the safety of gold and REITS versus the more economically sensitive copper and regional banks.

...

I was in the city yesterday for a few meetings and dropped by Fox Business to have a little chat with Charles Payne.

Charles is one of the few who let me talk about whatever I want. No agenda. Just price action.

I appreciate that.

It was just a short hit. But we talked about the seasonal tailwinds for stocks, how a stronger Dollar means stocks will remain under pressure, and what Financials and Homebuilders are telling us about the market.

We covered a lot. This fun.

Here's the full clip:

The math has been simple.

When the Dollar is doing well, stocks don't.

And when the Dollar is weakening, stocks are strong.

It's been made very clear to us all.

The US Dollar is the enforcer:

Tuesday night we held our September 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 Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Bear markets bring out the worst in us.

Investors lose money and look to others to blame for their mistakes. It's human nature; it takes less mental fortitude to pin the blame on an externality rather than adopt responsibility and work on yourself.

In bear markets, conspiracies are born, and hatred is often devised.

"If it wasn't for the Fed, my equity curve would still be sloping up."

"Wall Street and the wealthy are conspiring to make me poorer."

In my short stint in this industry, I've noticed a lot of this self-destructive behavior.

One particular notion I've seen catch traction in recent days is that the CME Group -- operator of the world's largest financial derivatives exchange -- is actively trying to suppress Bitcoin from global adoption.

The theory goes like this...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

Eventually, even thick skulls like mine get the point.

Pretty much all summer long, the team here at All Star Charts has been mentioning Enphase Energy $ENPH as a strong outperformer that is on the verge of a potential epic breakout. During today's internal Analyst meeting, the team agreed that now is finally the time to get involved.

JC and I did a video on a possible trade in $ENPH ahead of today's Fed Reserve Interest Rates announcement. We did just get into it moments ago. Enjoy this video to get a great idea of why we like this trade and how we'll play it:

A Bull Phase for Enphase Energy? @allstarcharts https://t.co/INbp6CH827

— Sean McLaughlin, NLD 📈 (@chicagosean) September 21, 2022

Markets trade in cycles.

We've seen these cycles play out over and over again throughout many decades.

But how do we profit from it all?

Well, for me, I like to use seasonal tendencies to help put the current market environment into context.

It's not about today and tomorrow, and it's not about next year. Where are we right now?

Our Cycle Composite does a good job of helping us put together a road map for this market's cycle.

On the left side of this chart we have the 2021 seasonal trends and on the right we have the 2022 trends.

Last year's composite includes every year since 1950, every post election year since 1950 and every year ending in 1, to include the decennial cycle. Look how closely last year's actual results mirrored the composite:

This is the video recording of the September 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• What's the Bear Case?
• One of worst starts to year for 60/40 portfolio in history
• The impact of the US Dollar on Stocks
• No lows list peaked 3 months ago
• Best time to buy stocks in the 4 year cycle
• Bearish sentiment persists
• ARKK and Biotech stopped falling in May
• S&P500 stuck below resistance 4100-4200
• European Banks show relative strength
• Midstream Stocks Breaking out - the full list
• Corn, Soybeans and Wheat with huge bases
• Silver bullish divergence vs Gold
• Other Emerging Markets outpacing China
• Small-cap Industrials stocks that are breaking out
• 1-yr yield highest roc in 40 years
• The Flippening Is Real
• List of best trade ideas

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US Dollar Index $DXY is on cruise control with nothing ahead but an open road.

The few obstacles that stood in its way are falling to the wayside. That’s right – the handful of commodity currencies that have refused to roll over during the past six months are beginning to slip.

Before we get to these fresh breakdowns, let’s set the scene with two currencies that have been anything but resilient – the euro and the British pound.

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 in...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under The Hood columne, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 16, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is 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.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional...