From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

As Notorious BIG would say... "and another one!"

We've been pointing out historic breadth readings since this summer. We've actually seen a handful of extreme readings that typically occur at major market lows and the early stages of new secular bull markets.

We've seen them across most major indexes as well, even Small and Mid-Caps.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to this exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

Despite being in a split market environment, we've pointed out how the weight of the evidence continues to shift further and further in the direction of the bulls with each passing week.

This past week, we finally saw what appears to be the tipping point as stocks and risk-assets were all up generously. We've been waiting for the market to make up its mind from a risk-appetite perspective, as well as for the stock market to pick a direction after almost three months of sideways action.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended November 6, 2020.

What we do 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.

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 we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.

Do stock market crashes normally happen when investors are expecting one?

I'm pretty sure it's the opposite of that.

Well, this is the chart being passed around this week. We're looking at the United States Crash Confidence Index, where fewer than 15% of respondents think NO crash is going to happen.

So in other words, almost 90% of respondents think "a catastrophic stock market crash in the U.S., like that of October 28, 1929 or October 19, 1987, is probable in the next six months, including the case that a crash occurred in the other countries and spreads to the U. S."

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone for participating in this Week's Mystery Chart. Most of you were sellers but the chart was inverted, so you were actually buyers.

We'd be buying this chart too, so let's dive right in and see what it is and why we're all so bullish.

This week's chart was the Invesco Chinese Technology ETF $CQQQ.

In this post, we'll dig into the strongest Chinese technology stocks and outline some trade ideas as a way to express our bullish thesis.

We'll also discuss some intermarket implications of this ETF and its components.

We're going to take a close look at these Chinese tech giants and see if we can glean some insight into the internals of CQQQ in addition to other International Indexes.

First of all, the chart looks a good deal different than it did when we posted the Mystery Chart earlier this week.

Welcome to the Best 3 month period of the year!

They always make a big fuss about "Sell in May and Go Away", but rarely do you they tell you to "Remember to Buy in November". Or as my friend Jeff Hirsch, of the Stock Trader's Almanac, likes to put it, "Buy in October and Get Yourself Sober".

All these sayings derive from the fact that since 1950, every single dollar made in the Dow Jones Industrial Average has come between the months of November through April. In fact, had you bought the Dow on the first trading day in May every year since 1950 and sold on Halloween, you would actually have negative return (or close to it, anyway. I believe the past couple of years put it in the black).

Now, within the "Best 6 Months" of the year, you have an even sweeter spot: November - January.

The way I see it, if stocks couldn't fall during what is historically the worst time of the year, imagine how they'll do during a time where they're actually supposed to go up!

Here's how stocks did during the "Worst 6 months" of 2020:

When I was going through my charts this week, this is one of the ones that stood out the most. I see Biotechnology, on both an equally-weighted and cap-weighted basis, breaking out of major bases.

More specifically, if you look at the Cap-weighted Index Fund $IBB, we're talking about half a decade of no progress. It looks to me like this is all changing now:

Click on Charts to Zoom in

Look at Biotech relative to the rest of the stock market. Again, I'm seeing a half-decade long consolidation resolving higher:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

Something we’ve been working on internally this year is using various bottoms-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. One way we’re doing this is by identifying 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.

Depending on where you're located, the month of November means many of you are looking forward to your first snow falls of the season. Were I live here in Colorado, we've already had two snow storms -- the first one on the day after Labor Day!! Don't feel sorry for me though, we love it. And with all the wildfires Colorado has had recently, it was badly needed.

With snow on my mind, it feels fitting today's trade idea is also related to snow, if in name only.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 longer-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 5-9 years.

Introducing the Young Aristocrats. We like to say these are "stocks that pay you to make money". Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum & relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?