From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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.

Nowadays, to make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, 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 new highs in...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals might be the most straightforward trade on the sheets right now.

Gold is 10 bucks away from a new all-time high. Silver and platinum are holding above critical breakout levels. And mining stocks are ripping.

Close your eyes and take a swing. You’re bound to hit a winner.

But your odds of success (and potential payout) improve if you forego shiny rocks in favor of buying gold and silver mining stocks.

Check out the Gold Miners $GDX breaking out relative to the Physical Gold Trust ETF $GLD:

GDX outperforming GLD speaks to risk-seeking behavior – a bullish environment for mining stocks and physical metals.

No wonder Alamos Gold $AGI, Eldorado Gold $EGO, and Kinross Gold $KGC are posting fresh multi-year highs. The most resilient trends outperform their alternatives – just like the Gold Miners ETF in the above chart. 

Meanwhile, the laggards refuse to break down. Even Newfound Gold $NFGC – fresh off all-time lows – has rallied more than...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Crowdstrike 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. 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, we sort the remaining...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Today’s analyst meeting was one broken record after another as we ripped through the most important charts on the market.

Not a top, never hit oversold…

Not a top, never hit oversold…

There’s a raging bull market on Wall Street right now. 

But the fun and games will come to a screeching halt if the following chart rolls over.

Check out the economically sensitive Home Construction ETF $ITB:

ITB checks both boxes.  It never hit oversold levels and is only a top if it breaks below 97. 

Plus, it’s ripping! 

Of course, we need a decisive resolution above the March high of 116.34 to confirm our bullish bias. 

But if the next bull run has legs, ITB will post new all-time highs. 

That also means lumber futures have to stop falling.

Futures have slid more than  28% beneath the March peak. If buyers are ever going to step and support higher lumber prices, this is it!

...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Will the Fed finally cut interest rates?

We can’t say for sure… 

All that matters is what the market thinks. And following Powell’s testimony this week, investors are increasing their September rate-cut bets.

Let’s review a few of our recent bond trades, as US treasuries could rip in the coming weeks.

Our entry point for T-bond futures was 117’27:

Price triggered a buy signal last month, but the breakout has been far from decisive.

If you haven’t taken a long position, you can move your risk level to the May 15 close, trading against  118’08.

Or, you can wait for buyers to take out 120’12 (the June 14 close).

Entry tactics aside, we’re targeting last December’s high of 125’30.  

The corresponding levels for the T-bond ETF $TLT have not changed:

We’re long...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that exhibit the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week via multiple reports.

But, we also highlight lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We publish this...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to this one, it couldn't be any simpler!

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 stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

The bottom line is it is a bull market. We want as many vehicles and options to express...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended July 7, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

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

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The talking heads are forecasting choppy market conditions and a significant correction for Q3.

News flash: The market has been messy for months. And we already experienced a stealth correction beneath the surface.

I’ll keep an open mind, but if commodity currencies start breaking out…

Forget about it!

Stocks have weathered the US dollar’s recent rally. 

Imagine how they’ll perform once the dollar rolls over, especially against risk-on currencies like the New Zealand dollar.

Check out the NSD/USD pair coiling within a symmetrical triangle after retesting its 2020 low:

I’m not a fan of symmetrical triangles, as I’ve found measuring risk with diagonal boundaries far less reliable than horizontal support/...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about markets or summer vacations –  I always avoid the crowds and aim to beat the heat.

No lines. No traffic. No fake, overpriced food.

It also means dropping those hot semiconductor names and reaching for silver mining stocks…

July is by far the best month of the year for gold’s crazy cousin. And it’s not even close:

Unsurprisingly, silver futures gained roughly seven percent last week. They also eclipsed the previous month's high and printed their highest weekly close since January 2013 – a stellar way to start the month.

On the flip side, June takes the cake as Silver’s most challenging month of the year.

And what did Silver do last month?

It only fell by three percent, finding support at a critical shelf of former highs:

Silver futures are down almost three percent today alone. No biggie. 

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.

Let's dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here's this week's list:

...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Forget about the selloff in Bitcoin for a minute.

Coal stocks are ripping!

Perhaps they’re giving back some recent gains today, but most stocks are.

More importantly, Monday marked the largest one-day rate-of-change for our Coal Index since 2020…

If you’re wondering why we created an index of coal stocks, the answer is simple: The December 2020 delisting of the VanEck Vectors Coal ETF $KOL forced our hand.

They shut down the only coal ETF just as commodities began ripping (many toward new all-time highs). You can’t make this stuff up… 

One of our favorite names – Alpha Metallurgical Resources $AMR – has gained over 4,000% off the December 2020 lows. Unbelievable!

Almost four years later, the rally isn’t over for these names. 

Our coal index is on the verge of kicking off the next leg higher:

In this week’s commodity trade section, I’ll review the six coal stocks from our index, outlining critical levels to trade against and logical areas to...