Below is the first ASC Mastermind Lab Course. These are special videos that will be made available throughout the duration of the 12-week course featuring conversations with professionals from across Wall Street discussing topics in their expertise. 

If you watched the first Mastermind class on Defining Personal Objectives, you heard me talk about diversification. Well, meet Chris Cain. Chris is the U.S. Quantitative Equity Strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, a division of Bloomberg LP, and he literally studies diversification. 

Chris and I discussed mathematics behind diversification, and how diversification can impact your long-term returns more than you even know. 

Enjoy this conversation. 

Have you heard about China?

Chinese stocks just had their best week in history, following the People's Bank of China's (PBOC) announcement of rate cuts, among other stimulative actions.

In July, we talked about Copper and its base and industrial metal peers showing broad weakness. But that seems to be changing...

China is the world's largest consumer of refined copper, so base and industrial metals have benefited from the recent pivot from the PBOC.

Chinese stocks and copper futures have been positively correlated for years:

Despite the gloomy headlines the market received this summer, major stock market sectors are showing resilience across the board, with new signs of life emerging. 

A shift seems to be on the horizon.

At the moment, we are long bonds. We like bonds, and the charts tell us we are right to like bonds here, but what does the future hold?

If inflation starts ticking up again, the market usually pivots toward the reflation trade—favoring sectors like energy, small caps, and financials as rates rise. (I am not saying that this is happening. I am saying that we need to keep an eye on this.) 

Energy has not participated in the bull run this year. When we compare XLE to some of the best stocks this cycle, like XLK, the performance gap is wild.

The chart below shows XLK up roughly 40% over the trailing 12 months while XLE is negative.

Meanwhile, the rally in bonds appears to be slowing down. 

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We've also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It's got all the big names and more–but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolled XLC position to November options.
3. No positions were exited since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Crypto is on the cusp of a bullish trend reversal.

This is the video recording of our September 2024 Mid-Month Strategy Session

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Adjustment to XME position.
3. No positions were exited since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Below is the replay and slide deck for Week 1 of ASC Mastermind.

"We should be doing more in China." ~ JC Parets during this morning's internal Analyst meeting.

This, coupled with my feeling that we need to be more aggressive in the stock market right now as the potential profits on the upside could be quite meaningful, playing in China is as aggressive as it gets.