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 $1B 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...

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...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaways:

• March rally takes some sting off of a challenging Q1.
• Short-term strength not yet reflected in longer-term trends.
• More new lows than new highs in the US, but Emerging Market new high list expands.

Stocks continued to bounce off of their March lows last week. It’s not quite lipstick on a pig but this move does take some of the sting off of what has been a weak Q1 for equities. All eleven sectors in the S&P 500 are now in positive territory for March, but only three (Energy, Utilities and Financials) have YTD gains and two of those, just barely so. Four sectors, accounting for more than 50% of the market cap of the S&P 500, are still down 8% or more heading into the final week of the quarter.

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.

Is There Enough in the Tank?

Pretty much everything in the world of energy has been on fire for the last quarter. Crude oil and energy stocks have been the stand-out performers this year as both have enjoyed a swift leg higher since early January. Despite the impressive price action, both are at logical levels to do some consolidating. Crude Oil and the Energy Sector SPDR (XLE) are challenging critical levels of overhead supply at former highs. Both of these areas have acted as resistance in the past, so it would not be unusual for sellers to show up once again. While the primary trends are still very much intact for energy stocks and futures, a breather here and some digestion of the recent gains would be constructive. The next key piece of information should come in the form of how that digestion looks. Do we correct through price, or time?

...

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 green this week as 57% of our list closed higher with a median return of 0.42%.
• The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was this week's big winner, tacking on 36bps and closing just shy of 2.5%.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a weekly loss of -14.96%.
• There was a 13% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 34%.
• 45% of our macro list made fresh 4...

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday April 5th @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday evening:

Good morning everyone! This dispatch comes to you from deep in the northernmost reaches of Northern California, on the edge of the great Redwoods National Park.

I flew out here on Sunday morning with my oldest friend (since we were both five years old). After landing and shopping for some provisions, we got a short three-mile hike in during the afternoon/early evening to get our feet acclimated. But it was just a warm-up for the 30 miles we hope to cover today through Wednesday. Yesterday, the weather was perfect, the trail conditions were excellent, and the giant Redwoods were absolutely stunning! And we're just getting started. Hopefully, the weather continues to hold up (fingers crossed!).

Of course, I brought my laptop, and since my East Coast friend was suffering from a little jet lag, he crashed early last night. That left me some time to rip through charts in my hotel room, as one, such as me, does.

During my scanning, I couldn't help but get fully distracted by this chart of $GLD:

It's easy to get lost in the weeds.

As humans, we're vulnerable to it.

So it's important to understand the way our minds work and set up gates that can bring us back home, to what's important.

In the case of trading and investing, being on the right side of the trend.

A great way to do that is by zooming out.

Here's Bitcoin, for example, going back to 2014.

Doesn't this give you a much different perspective compared to most Bitcoin charts you see?

Turtle Creek Asset Management continues to build its position in the door and window manufacturer JELD-WEN Holding $JELD. 

Friday’s Form 4 filing is its fourth filing in just two weeks and reveals an additional $16.5 million of share purchases.

In last week's letter, we outlined a handful of key bullish developments leading us to forecast a high probability of an upward resolution from this consolidation.

Alleviation of the selling in futures and renewed spot demand pointed to a high probability of Bitcoin resolving higher out of this multi-month trading range.

As of the writing of this note, we've seen this take place, with Bitcoin taking out resistance at 46,000.

More aggressive long positions are now warranted.

We are almost done with the first quarter of the calendar year and the last quarter of our financial year. There are certain sectors that are peeping out from beneath the surface and hence attracting attention. Is this a theme we may see play out in the quarter going forward? Most likely. Most sectors have remained sideways or subdued in their move and they are finally picking a side!

Today we are here to discuss one such sector and some interesting setups that one could take advantage of.

Let's see what's on the roster sheet today.

We mentioned this in the recently concluded conference call, and we'll say it again- Bouncebacks are here! From within the price bouncebacks that we're seeing certain sectors are displaying more strength. One such sector is the Industrials. We're talking about the Industrial Manufacturing sector, so don't go looking for the US sector XLI.

BUT, if you did, you wouldn't be entirely wrong. The Industrials sector (XLI) in the US is picking up pace as we speak. So this is one of those times where you see similar themes play out across different geographies. Fun when that happens, isn't it?...

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts: