How do we know if we're in a bull market or not?

Generally speaking, more stocks are going up than going down in bull markets.

And sure, there are a lot of different ways to quantify it, but this is really the gist of it: Are more stocks going up or are more of them going down?

It really is that simple.

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...

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...

Where is the defensive rotation?

I was told US Stocks were in a bear market.

For those keeping score at home, the NYSE new lows list peaked in June. That was over 4 months ago.

But Consumer Staples have been underperforming since May!

Why are you an investor?

Have you asked yourself that recently?

Why do you take time out of your life to enter into the arena that we call markets?

Are you here to make money?

Or would you rather gossip about fed??

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.

I'm old enough to remember when stocks would go up for multiple weeks at a time.

They used to call those uptrends where I'm from.

So how about a 3rd straight week of gains for the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

That's something you don't see every day:

Wednesday night we held our October Mid-Month Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

It’s easy to lose sight of how impressive energy has been this year. 

We get it. Sideways action is boring.

But while the rest of the market has been selling off, energy has shown incredible resilience, digesting gains in a continuation pattern since early summer.

After an explosive rally for energy stocks off the 2020 lows, it’s normal to experience an extended period of corrective action. In fact, it’s healthy. 

Now get this...

Many of these stocks haven’t even broken out yet!

We know it sounds crazy, especially when some of these industry groups have more than tripled during the trailing 24 months.

But the charts don’t lie. They’re telling us some of these trends might just be getting started. Let’s take a look.

We can break down oil and gas companies into three main categories: upstream, midstream, and downstream. 

These designations refer to where a particular company operates along the supply chain, from extracting the raw material to selling the refined...

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 Airbnb, Uber, and Paypal.

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 which you can check out here.

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...

If there's anything that this market has taught me, in almost 20 years of doing this, it's that expecting the unexpected should be a way of life.

I've had a front row seat to watch legendary Wall Street firms disappear practically overnight.

I saw Crude Oil Futures trading below Zero.

Flash Crashes.

Growth stocks going up 100x in price with little or not business activity.

Anything can happen.

I interrupt this bear market to bring you stocks that are going up.

While people are crying about their stocks going down, we're focused on the winners.

You know why? Because winners tend to keep on winning.

And losers? Well, we don't care so much for you. By definition, few people do.

Here's a stock making new 6-month highs this week.

You may have heard of it: