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 current market environment.

This week, we're going to highlight a number of critical Stock Market Indexes and Sectors, as well as assets in the FICC Markets that are approaching logical levels of overhead supply and pose the question... "Are risk assets due for some corrective action or consolidation?"

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood."

What we do is analyze the most popular stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We have some new additions coming for how we generate the list of most popular names, which we'll explain more each week as we add new data sets. There are so many new data sources popping up that all we need to do is organize them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

The S&P 500 finally achieved new highs this week. The market is clicking on all cylinders as breadth and participation continues to broaden, and favorable risk/reward setups are popping up all over the place. Let's dive into the most popular tickers this week and see what's going on "under the hood" in these hot names.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone who responded to this week's Mystery Chart. Responses were somewhat mixed. It was a daily chart of the iShares Medical Devices ETF $IHI.

What we really wanted to know is whether or not investors are buying these kinds of bullish continuation patterns right now. Many alluded to the underlying trend being higher but still wanted to wait for the flag pattern to resolve before taking action.

This is a prudent approach and we're looking at the chart in a similar light. With that said, we're also viewing setups like this within the context of what is going on in other areas of the market. In other words, as more and more of these patterns resolve to the upside, which they are, the higher the likelihood is that others will follow their course.

In this post, we'll walk through our top-down approach to highlight why we like Medical Devices right now and then drill into some of our favorite setups as a way to express our bullish thesis.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Last night we held August's Monthly Conference Call which our Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we'll provide a summary of the call by highlighting 5 of the most important charts along with JC's commentary on them and a brief explanation for each.

Let's get right to it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

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 current market environment.

This week, we're going to highlight the continued outperformance from offensive assets as well as the weakness we're starting to see from many defensive assets. This kind of action continues to suggest increasing risk-appetite and is supportive of higher prices within Equity and Commodity Markets.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood." You can read more about the column here.

What we do is analyze the most popular Robinhood stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We have some new additions coming for how we generate the list of most popular names, which we'll explain more each week as we add new data sets. This is a really exciting time for us. There are so many new data sources popping up so it's really just our responsibility to organize it to where it only tells us exactly what we want: An unusual increased level of interest for an asset.

Last night we held a Happy Hour With Traders and discussed market internals and breadth with some of the best Technicians in the business. We focused mainly on the more popular aggregate breadth indicators such as the percentage of new highs and lows, the percentage of stocks above the 200-day, and so on.

We also talked a bit about our process for analyzing breadth on a more granular level, which is simply by looking at our universe of indexes, sectors, industry groups, and individual stocks each week. When we run our scans and look at the individual charts themselves, we continue to see a higher number of new highs and bullish momentum characteristics.

This is evidence of improving breadth.

This week's Mystery Chart was one of the latest Industry Groups we noticed making fresh all-time highs. In this post, we'll discuss the chart and offer some trade ideas in some of the groups' strongest components.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

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 give our outlook and some of the things we're watching for in the week ahead.

This week, we're going to highlight our US Index and Sector ETF tables and focus on the rotation we're seeing into more offensive areas of US Equities. We'll then tie this into what we're seeing across the FICC universe.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to this week's edition of "Under The Hood." You can read more about the column here.

What we do is analyze the most popular Robinhood stocks over the trailing week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

This was another interesting week as the market continues to grind higher with zero regard for whatever bad news is thrown at it. With the S&P 500 knocking on the door of new all-time highs, let's take a look at what Robinhood investors were buying this week.

One thing I've learned very quickly through writing this column each week is that contrary to popular opinion, these Robinhood investors are more often than not on the right side of the trend.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Mystery Chart. Most of you either wanted to buy or do nothing and wait for more information.

The chart was the iShares Global Silver Miners ETF $SLVP. We're bullish metals so we agree and want to be buying this over the long-term as well.

With that said, we want to be cautious at current levels for reasons we'll outline in this post. First, let's look at the updated chart.