The US Dollar is back up to its 2016 and 2020 highs.

On both of those occasions, the Dollar sold off and risk assets went on to do very well.

Is this time different?

Here's what it looks like:

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We’ve had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

I was talking to some people this morning about how you can technically say that Bitcoin is still in a structural bull market.

It really depends on your time horizon.

Because when you zoom out, the past year has been really messy. It looks like a big giant consolidation.

This can either be massive distribution and a major top, or it can be a consolidation within an ongoing uptrend.

Here's how I see it.

It's easy to get lost in the day to day noise of the market.

We're human.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

Understand that it's who we are.

Now, accepting that as a natural fault that we all have is step #1 to recovery.

There are steps we can put into place to help us overcome these emotions.

We get to talk to a lot of traders and investors every single day. I like to listen.

In the first chart, we have what seems to be the consensus view. Investors fear that we're going to complete this top in the S&P500 sending prices down even lower.

Do you agree? We break 4100 and down we go?

Or could it be like the second chart, and all this support holds?

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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

A few weeks ago, we pointed out widening crack spreads and what they meant for oil refining stocks. You can read more here, as we explain how wider crack spreads support higher prices for this particular area of the market.

Three weeks later, crack spreads have widened to their highest level in more than a decade.

This post is not about crack spreads, though. It’s about energy and how everything in the space is working these days. 

Bullish rotation continues to be the theme for energy.

This week, gasoline was the standout, booking a 10% gain and breaking out of a massive base to new all-time highs.

Let’s take a look at the breakout in gasoline futures and discuss what it means for crude oil.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

While most uptrends have come under pressure in 2022, the US dollar has remained as strong as any.

This dollar strength, particularly at the index level, is nothing new. We've been discussing it.

It's been taking place all year, driven by the major pairs such as the euro, the yen, and the pound.

However, something new is the burgeoning strength beneath the surface, even outside of the big developed market currencies. We've been seeing dollar internals improve drastically in recent weeks.

And now we're seeing momentum accelerate for the US Dollar Index $DXY. Today, DXY is on track for its largest single-day gain since the pandemic crash more than two years ago.

All of the evidence suggests this dollar strength is the real deal.

Let's talk about what it means and how we want to position for it.

Here's the US Dollar Index ripping to its highest level in almost 20 years:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The US Dollar Index $DXY is ripping to its highest level in 20 years today.

We just covered this dollar strength and what it means in our Currency Report, which you can read here.

We talk about the implications of a stronger dollar on risk assets, particularly stocks.

While this rally in the dollar is definitely not a good thing for stocks in the US or abroad, we see these intermarket relationships dislocate all the time.

Could stocks and the dollar rally higher together? Sure! Commodities and the dollar have already been doing this for several quarters now...

Let's talk about that quick.

We're doing something a little bit different today.

I'm thrilled to welcome my friend Justin Paterno, Portfolio Manager of the new OSPREY NFT Fund.

Whenever I have questions about NFTs, Justin is the one I turn to. In fact, a lot of my friends go to Justin with questions about NFTs.

So in this episode, I chat with Justin about all things NFTs, different "sectors" of NFTs, the future of NFTs, the price analysis aspects of NFTs and Web 3.0, and all the things that come along with those, good or bad.

I personally own a bunch of NFTs, and I have a funny feeling I will own a lot more in the coming decades. Therefore, it's probably a good idea that we get a better understanding of them.

This was a lot of fun and a nice break from all the other asset classes that we're always talking about.