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 their journey...

This week will be an opportunity for me to practice the art of giving up control. It will also be an incredible opportunity to practice acceptance and patience.

The market is open and I’m typing this piece while traveling 30,000 feet above Midwestern corn fields en route to New York City.

Thankfully, I’ve got internet access on the plane and can keep tabs on the market and my positions. But it’s not perfect. Anyone who’s tried to work with airplane WiFi knows it isn’t always as reliable as we’d like it to be.

I’m headed to NYC to reconnect with the All Star Charts team, celebrate our friend Brian Shannon in honor of his recent book release, and attend the Chartered Market Technician’s 50th Annual Symposium.

All week, I’ll be gathering with some of the smartest market minds, driven traders, and portfolio managers around. I’m hoping to...

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 Monday May 1st @ 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 Monday evening:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

"Rates, the US dollar, crude oil, and the S&P 500... repeat!"

These charts swirl atop every investor’s mind as markets await the upcoming rate hike decision.

Meanwhile, it’s messy!

The S&P 500 challenges the upper bounds of a multi-month range. The US dollar and interest rates chop sideways. And crude oil remains resilient despite increased selling pressure.

But not all markets are trapped in a trading range right now. In fact, there’s one forex cross breaking down, suggesting lower yields and cheaper crude oil…

It's the nokkie-stocky, the Norwegian krone and the Swedish krone!

Check out the triple-pane chart of the US 1o-year yield, crude oil futures, and the NOK/SEK cross:

I want to note up front that I used semi-log scale for the US 10-year yield chart. The reason: consistency, as the other two charts are in semi-log, and to present the data in the cleanest possible way.

I did not adjust the scaling to fit a trendline on...

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.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 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.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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...

First palladium, now platinum?

Platnuim broke out of an inverted head and shoulders pattern last week, printing fresh 52-week highs.

The bullish data points continue to roll in despite the waning strength in gold and silver.

Check it out!

You want to talk about trends?

The biggest trend I see is that stocks keep going up in price, but investors are more pessimistic than ever.

I don't understand...

What are people so angry about? Why are they so scared?

Barron's latest Big Money poll shows that out of the 130 managers polled only 6% of their clients were bullish.

lol 6%?

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.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The increased selling pressure across grain markets might not be on your radar. 

But pay close attention: The soybean complex, corn, and wheat are edging toward their respective year-to-date lows as demand wanes. 

Even if you don’t trade these ag contracts, fresh multi-month lows – especially in wheat – carry broad implications for equities and cyclical assets. (Hint: It has to do with crude oil.) 

That’s why I’m on high alert for a potential breakdown in Chicago wheat…

Wheat has been in a strong downtrend since its March 2022 peak, entering a bearish momentum regime last summer.

Notice it's currently carving out a potential multi-month reversal pattern below a significant polarity zone.

But the bulls have their work cut out for them, as the bearish momentum profile suggests sellers are still in control of the market. 

When I take a closer look, I see a...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

With earnings season underway, financials are making a statement this week.

The first few weeks of reporting are always heavy with banks and financial stocks. As these are the market laggards, we knew we would get some critical information from their earnings reactions.

While it hasn't been fireworks to the upside by any means, there also hasn't been much downside from these stocks.

It is never a bad thing if the bears can't take down the weakest stocks. That's what is going on right now.

Meanwhile, more and more bullish setups keep crossing our desk. It's all very constructive.

Let's talk about two we like right now.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

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

Here’s this week’s list:

Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. 

Then...