From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as a market of stocks.

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions… but there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club. We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

This is the video recording of our April 6, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

Before we dive into today’s note, we have an update on the Elon-versus-Twitter saga that’s been unfolding all week.

On Tuesday evening, Musk finally filed the appropriate Form 13D we were waiting for, reflecting his intentions as an “active” shareholder.

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

King dollar is sitting perched upon its throne. But the floor beneath it is beginning to crumble.

The rally in the US dollar index $DXY isn’t as strong as today's fresh highs would suggest. In fact, when we dig beneath the surface, the dollar is only trending higher against a few currencies over shorter timeframes, while underperforming the vast majority.

Conveniently, the handful of currencies the USD continues to best are the most heavily weighted components of the US dollar index.

This lack of internal strength can be seen pretty much anywhere outside of the chart of DXY itself. Whether we're looking at our USD trend summary table, our custom USD advance-decline line, or the individual crosses themselves, it all suggests the current trend in the dollar lacks support. 

Let’s take a look.

Our USD trend summary table illustrates both the broad weakness as well as those critical areas of strength that are driving the current uptrend in the DXY:  

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

One of the overarching themes since we launched the Inside Scoop and began writing about The Hot List each day has been the relentless interest in commodity stocks.

Coincidentally, these same stocks have exhibited incredible relative strength over this time period. It’s already been a few months, but we’re not seeing any signs of this trend slowing down.

We discussed a lot of these names during last week’s live strategy session. Click here to watch the replay and to download the accompanying chartbook.

And be sure to join us tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. ET for this week’s live strategy session.

Today, we’re going to talk about some new long setups that we’re getting involved with.

We had a feeling this one would be fun to watch unfold...

After just 24 hours of speculation and buzz about Elon Musk becoming the largest shareholder of Twitter, we already have some important follow-up news.

In an 8-K filed around 8:30 a.m. ET today, Twitter reported that Musk has been appointed to a board seat.

The only significant information in the filing is that Musk is restricted from becoming a beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of outstanding shares during the time he serves as a director (and 90 days thereafter).

Whether he already owns the 14.9% now or not is unknown. We should find out soon in a 13D and/or a Form 4 filing in the coming days.

Stay tuned. There’s going to be more to come on this one.

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.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended April 1, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

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

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

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 Warning From Banks

With risk-seeking behavior increasing, Financials and banks are lagging behind and not participating to the upside in a way we’d expect. The chart below is an equal-weight representation of the six largest banks in the US. This index can act as a leading indicator for financials more broadly. The fact that the index has not been able to hold the 2007 highs in an environment where rates are rising globally is a concern. Throughout history, you don’t tend to see bull markets without financials. These are the largest and most important financial institutions in the world. Bulls want to see them carve out a bottom here and catch higher along with other cyclical stocks. It should happen soon if it’s going to.

The big news of the day is centered around an SEC filing by the wealthiest man in the world.

This morning, Elon Musk disclosed a 9.2% ownership stake in Twitter $TWTR in a 13G filing. Musk has amassed roughly 73.5 million shares for a value of almost $3 billion.

According to the filing, Musk has been buying since the middle of March.

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

The relentless outperformance from commodities and commodity-related assets shows no signs of slowing.

The CRB Index is up 27.03% year to date while the S&P 500 and the 30-year Treasury bond aren’t even in the ballpark, posting lackluster performances of  negative 4.95% and negative 6.25%, respectively.

Commodities are really the only game in town these days.

With that as our backdrop, we want to continue focusing on this asset class for buying opportunities.

As many of these contracts consolidate or correct following explosive upside moves, we’re paying extra attention to those that have been basing in recent months – such as natural gas. 

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a zoomed-out weekly chart of natural gas futures: