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 Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw a nice gap up this morning for the indices.

Then they came back down.

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

While the major stock market averages remain a mess, we continue to find new setups in individual stocks we want to buy.

From a market internals standpoint, it is encouraging that bullish chart patterns are emerging from a variety of sectors and industry groups.

Today, we have two industrials, a fast-food operator, and a chipmaker.

We already know that institutions and insiders like these names. And now - with these charts pressing on new highs, we like them too.

Let's take a look.

The Nasdaq just went out last week at new 7-month highs.

Growth stocks are back.

But why?

Interest Rates are falling at a record pace.

And when you look at the intermarket relationships, it makes a lot of sense:

Mario Gabelli's GAMCO Investors is back on our list.

GAMCO filed a 13D revealing an increase in ownership in Sinclair Broadcast Group $SBGI from 8.32% to 9.34%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a nice reversal Friday after the early morning drop.

We still need to get back above 400 on $SPY.

US interest rates have fallen to their lowest levels since Q3 last year.

And with falling rates has come a consistent bid into Technology and growth all year so far.

That has driven the Nasdaq100 to its highest weekly close in 7 months:

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...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Monday night we held our March Monthly 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!

With Financials continuing to fall apart, we're focused on the assets that are making new highs - Bitcoin and Gold being 2 of them.

I was on Fox Business yesterday talking about the importance of the 2007 highs in the Financials Index.

Here's a fun behind the scenes look.

The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes in a Form 4 from Carl Icahn.

Icahn bought $30 million worth of Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX, increasing his ownership stake from 12.64% to 14.44%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I like to say this market is not for the faint of heart.

This morning we're trading below the 200-day moving average on $SPY.

Unless we recover 392.44 we can head back down to 385.