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

The turmoil in equity markets has stolen all the attention since last year. But stocks aren't the only asset class that's a mess. We're getting the same kind of mixed signals and sloppy price action from forex markets.

While stocks remain under pressure, currencies have been throwing head fakes and dishing out whipsaws all year long. The AUD/USD broke to fresh nine-month highs just last week only to reverse 200 pips by Friday’s close.

We're seeing this type of action from currencies all over the world. It’s hard to trust a breakout these days. As frustrating as these failed moves may be, there are some clean chart patterns and favorable setups shaping up right now.

One area where the trend is very clear is the Japanese yen. Just about anything priced in Yen has been rallying recently as the currency continues to collapse.

Today, we’re going to highlight the massive base in the USD/JPY.

Lets’ dive in.

Here’s the weekly chart of the USD/JPY cross:

Abdiel Capital Management LLC reported a $2.6 million purchase in the cloud computing and enterprise software stock Appian Corporation $APPN.

The firm now owns more than 5.9 million shares, representing a 15% ownership interest.

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.

The way we did this is simple…

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

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

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

A Tale Of Two Markets

2022 has been a tale of two markets. On the one hand, cyclical stocks have shown impressive leadership as they continue to trend higher and make new highs. But then there are growth stocks which continue to lag significantly as they struggle to find a bottom. While this trend is really nothing new, it has accelerated notably in recent months. The bubble chart below is a great way to visualize the dispersion in performance between these two groups of stocks. Whether the leaders catch lower, or the laggards eventually play catch-up is something we’ll have to wait and see. But for now, the two are moving in opposite directions. As long as this is the case, we want to continue positioning ourselves in the strongest groups while staying away from the weakest ones.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our April Monthly Strategy Session last week. Premium Members can click here to review the recording and download the chartbook.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises, as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

It didn’t even last a week!

The Elon and Twitter $TWTR team-up is over before it ever got started.

In a tweet last night, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Elon had rejected the company’s offer to join the board.

The two will not be working together for now, at least not in a friendly way.

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:

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Durable Capital Partners LP.

After disclosing a purchase of roughly $25 million in Duolingo Inc $DUOL, the firm now owns 9% of the language-learning platform.

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

Benchmark yields have moved in a vertical line higher since the beginning of March. This isn't just the case in the US; we're seeing similar action all across the globe.

But as rates rally higher and higher, more and more classic intermarket relationships are failing to confirm the move.

Yes, commodities and commodity-related stocks remain resilient, and bonds are an absolute dumpster fire.

Most other assets we would expect to do well in a rising rate environment simply aren’t. This is especially true for the banks!

Meanwhile, those groups that we'd expect to underperform in this kind of environment, such as utilities and other defensive stocks, are actually outperforming.

All of this speaks to risk-aversion, not risk-seeking behavior.

It’s been a wild few weeks of insider activity.

Today, we have another big splash, brought to us by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A.

The investment conglomerate filed both a Form 3 and a Form 4 last night, revealing a brand new position worth roughly $4.2 billion in HP Inc $HPQ.