From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt.

They no longer represent an opportunity cost, either.

No, gold and crew carry downside risk – nothing else!

What changed since last week? 

Gold futures undercut a critical level of interest…

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I need to set the record straight.

Earlier in spring, I wrote a note highlighting wheat’s tendency to lead crude oil at key inflection points.  

While this statement is mostly true, it needs clarification.

Chicago wheat does have a tendency to lead crude oil at significant market tops. But crude leads at critical troughs.

Check out the crude oil overlaid with Chicago wheat futures:

Notice crude bottomed in Q1 of  2009, 2016, and earlier this year. Chicago wheat followed roughly six to nine months later, marking critical turning points in late Q3 of 2009 and 2016.

Will wheat do the same in 2023? 

I don’t know. But strong seasonal trends are clearly at work in both markets. 

And if crude oil’s rally provides any indication, I have to lean toward "yes." 

Here are crude oil futures breaking out of a multi-month base...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We've also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It's got all the big names and more–but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let's dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here's this week's list:

...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let's dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Stocks and bonds look vulnerable right now. 

US T-bonds are sliding to fresh decade lows. The S&P 500 completed a three-month top last week.  And the Nasdaq 100 is on the verge of doing the same. 

Those summer highs are receding into the collective memory bank, replaced by new lows and growing unease. Sellers are out in full force.

But instead of allowing the near-term selling pressure and overall choppy conditions to throw us off balance, let’s focus on the one underlying trend tying this market together…

Rising interest rates!

Check out the commodity-bond ratio overlaid with US 30-year yield $TYX:

I presented this chart yesterday during the Chart Summit – no markups needed.

For whatever reason, I’ve never shared this chart before. Perhaps I thought it...

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...

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.

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.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

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

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new highs in...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US Dollar Index $DXY has posted its tenth week consecutive in the green. 

And with the dollar off to a solid start Monday morning, an eleventh looks promising.

This is excellent news for dollar bulls.

But it's a gloomy prospect for risk assets, especially precious metals…

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.

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...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Markets are adjusting to rising rates as investors weigh the possibility of “higher for longer.”

Bonds are breaking down to fresh lows. The major US stock market indexes are chopping within a range (perfectly normal from a seasonal and cyclical perspective). And commodities are kicking back into gear. 

All of these intermarket pieces fall neatly into a dynamic puzzle. Nothing appears out of place.

But the best information comes from markets presenting atypical behavior or defying expectations.

One commodity is doing just that as we head into the weekend...

Silver!

Did silver not get a copy of the FOMC press release? Or perhaps silver ignored it altogether… 

Silver should sell off as the 10-year yield hits a new sixteen-year high and the US dollar heads toward its...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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. Click here to check it out.

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:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the remaining names by their proximity to new 52-...

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 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 giants that are outperforming the averages.

By adding our technical analysis to the mix, the Young...