Gold has leaned sideways to lower lately.

The US dollar and interest rates continue to rise, creating unfavorable conditions for the yellow metal and its crazy cousin, silver.

As long as those trends remain intact, precious metals will struggle. And they have... until very recently.

Regardless of the broader intermarket landscape, I can't ignore near-term strength for these shiny rocks...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US Dollar Index $DXY is chopping smack-dab in the middle of a three-week range.

Currency markets are quiet. The euro, the pound, and the yen have all dialed back the volatility.

But there’s nothing wrong with the sideways action.

And in no way does it diminish the underlying uptrend for the dollar. 

In fact, the near-term trendless range makes sense in light of DXY’s recent run and the long-term support levels in play for major currencies.

Check out the DXY with the number of consecutive up weeks in the lower pane: 

Eleven weeks in a row! The index climbed higher for almost three straight months. 

A period of consolidation not only makes sense but politely adheres to the law of gravity.

From the Desk of Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

The "news" is designed to be a distraction for investors.

Earlier in the week, Bitcoin made some noise as the price soared 10% amid rumors of the approval of BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin ETF.

At the height of this speculation, Cointelegraph apologized, stating the rumors were false, resulting in the liquidation of $65 million BTC within minutes.

When we look at the chart, Bitcoin continues to press against the same overhead supply level it’s struggled with all year. It’s really that simple.

This is the video recording of the October 2023 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Buyers drove home their precious metals stance for a second week.

Gold and silver posted wide-bodied bars, rocketing higher on the open and closing near the day’s peaks. 

Bullish momentum thrusts like these tend to spark sustained rallies.

That's right!

It could be off to the races for these shiny rocks, especially given the crucial levels recovered last Friday...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended October 14, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

Have you noticed how everyone forgot about Healthcare stocks?

All it took was 2 years of no progress for everyone to lose track of just what a monster this trade has been for so long.

Just to put things in perspective, here's what Healthcare as a sector has done over the past 20 years:

How come so many investors get mad that an index, which was designed to buy more of the best stocks and less or none of the worst stocks, owns more of the best stocks and less or none of the worst stocks?

The S&P500 is up over 21% since the October low last year. In fact, last week marked the 1 year anniversary of this bull market.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq100 is up 40% over the past 12 months (because it's a bear market?)

During this time, Technology is up 46%, Communications is up 42% and Industrials are up 22% - representing the 3 best performing groups of stocks.

These are the registration details for our LIVE Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Tuesday October 17th @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night:

From the Desk of Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

One of the relative trends we must regularly evaluate is the relationship between large-caps and small-caps.

Sometimes large-caps outperform. Other times, it’s the little guys leading the way. 

This ratio tells us which ones we should be focusing on. 

The chart below shows the Russell 1000 Large-Cap ETF (IWB) relative to the Russell 2000 Small-Cap ETF (IWM) breaking out of a monster-basing formation.

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.