From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Louis Sykes @Haumicharts

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.

Like we discussed last week, Equity Markets are becoming more of a mixed bag. This week, we'll expand on this theme.

Prices continue to flirt with the risk levels we've outlined for various assets in recent weeks. We still believe the weight of the evidence is in favor of the bulls, but with so many assets at inflection points, we're paying close attention to every new day's data as it comes in.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended October 2, 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.

This is the video recording of our October 2, 2020 Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

This week I chat with Howard about the things that he just doesn't think are going to happen. What can we check off? He mentions major moves in the Nasdaq and also Apple missing on a quarter or new product.

He then flips the script and asks me about what's changed in my life since becoming a father. Tune in to find out!

A lot of things stood out as I updated our Monthly Candlestick Chartbook for September.

On Monday we're hosting a live strategy session for Members to discuss all of our key takeaways, but today I want to share a few themes worth noting.

Today we're taking a look at a stock in the Consumer Discretionary Sector. Ticker symbol $MCD

They make burgers, fries, chicken and a variety of desserts. The food is okay, I guess. The stock is way better.

This looks like a year-long base trying to break out to new all-time highs.

We only want to be betting on this long if it is above 220. Otherwise, we can't make that breakout argument. Our upside target is 280.

So far today, I’ve ignored what I can only assume are tens of thousands of posts and articles dissecting last night’s debate. I’ve said it before — As market participants, the election doesn’t interest us. It’s the change in seasonal strength this time of year that has our attention. 

But I’m sure they’ll continue pumping out more political gossip than anyone could possibly absorb. After all, it’s 2020. Most folks are stuck at home, anxious, and searching for any meaningless distractions they can find.  

If you’re nervous about the election or the markets, tonight’s your chance to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. September is over and the fourth quarter begins tomorrow. That means we have fresh batch of monthly candles to review! It doesn’t get any better than that… 

If you do one thing this week, it needs to be a thorough review of these longer-term trends. It’s one of my most important rituals that allows me to tune out the noise better than most.

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.

Like we discussed last week, Equity Markets are becoming more of a mixed bag, but there are still plenty of strong areas we want to be betting on.

We're back above the risk levels we've outlined in recent weeks for most major indexes and we believe the resumption in relative strength from former leadership groups such as the Nasdaq, Tech, and Growth has given us a heads up that the recent correction low is in.

The way I learned it is that, "Sector Rotation Is The Lifeblood Of A Bull Market".

But what does that mean exactly? Why does it matter? Why should we care?

All great questions, so I invited my friend Todd Sohn from Strategas and our very own Steve Strazza to discuss this important topic.

What sort of rotation are we seeing today?

Here is Part 2 of our discussion:

(Catch up on Sector Rotation Part 1 here)

We packed our latest Under the Hood report with several choice setups displaying strong relative strength, beautiful bases, and even a couple of names making bullish moves at key risk levels. There were a ton of potential long setups with risk skewed to the upside on this week's list. 

The only problem with this is that the direction of the underlying market was (and frankly, still is) largely in question.

Today, the broader market followed through with strong gains to the upside, supporting our view that a tradeable low has been made.

With this as our backdrop, we want to share three more setups from our most recent "Under The Hood" list as additional vehicles to express our thesis more aggressively on the long side.

Here's the table from this past week's report.

This week we're looking at a long idea in the Pharma space.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended September 25, 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.