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

Treasury Bonds have collapsed in recent months as interest rates have rallied to their highest levels in years.

And it’s not just treasuries, the trend is lower for corporate bonds as well.

While fixed income markets have experienced steady selling pressure since 2021, downside volatility has accelerated in recent months. Following the worst Q1 returns in decades, bonds have continued to plunge to kick off the 2nd quarter.

The best way for us to take advantage of this is to keep finding clean setups to short.

Today, we will outline a couple of shorts in high-yield debt and discuss what a sustained downtrend for these bonds could mean for the broader market.

First up is the High-Yield Corporate Bond ETF $HYG:

HYG completed a topping pattern earlier this year and has been following through lower ever since. Price is currently challenging a critical level at the 2018 lows ~80. 

We want to sell a break below that level with a...

In a letter to the board of directors, Elon Musk has made an unsolicited bid to buy 100% of Twitter $TWTR in an all-cash deal.

He’s offering $54.20 per share, which represents a 54% premium from when he began investing in the stock and a 38% premium from the time it was announced.

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 during...

This is the video recording of our April 13, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Jan Barta of Pale Fire Capital.

Barta continues to grow his position in Groupon $GRPN, as this is the second large Form 4 filing in the last two weeks.

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.

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.

After our price and liquidity filters are applied, we sort by proximity to new highs in order to...

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.

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 the stock is about to move in their...

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:

• Our macro universe was red this week as 72% of our list closed lower with a median return of -1.25%.
• US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the winner this week with a gain of about 30bps.
• The biggest loser was Dow Jones Transports $DJT, with a weekly loss of -6.71%.
• There was a 5% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 28%.
• 15% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs, 13...

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.