From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended February 17, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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 options activity, or...

In bull markets you have leadership groups.

That's just a simple fact that you see in every cycle.

During this bull market in particular, the one that turned 8-months old earlier this week, Industrials have been a real leader.

The Industrials Sector Index Fund $XLI is the best performing sector of them all since the June lows.

Now take a look at Industrials on an equally-weighted basis relative to the S&P500 equally-weighted.

From a broader perspective, Industrials are breaking out to new 14-year highs relative to the rest of the market:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was some sloppy action today, and the market is showing weakness.

Let's see if we level out next week.

Support on $SPY is 405, then 402.35. Resistance is at 408.

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

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:

...

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by ValueAct Partners.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $10 million in Insight Enterprises $NSIT, increasing its ownership stake to 11.90%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

A complete  late-day sell-off...

As JC said, February is like a hangover from the last three months.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The $SPX was saved by its 21-day moving average around 4,080 and is now trying to hold above its eight-day moving average at 4,124.

Tomorrow is monthly options expiration, so we should see more volatility.

Director Richard F. Wallman filed a Form 4 revealing the acquisition of 1,000 shares of Roper Technologies $ROP, valued at roughly $424,950.

There was a 13G filed by Millennium Management, which reported a passive ownership stake of 5.90% in Evolus $EOLS.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

So, either the $VIX is broken or the market is.

The VIX was down more than 15% over the past few days, whereas the market isn't really moving.

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...

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

Our Hot Corner Live Strategy Session was full of new bullish chart patterns today.

There was little need to discuss the latest bullish developments for the broader market, as the individual setups painted a clear picture of continued breadth expansion.

If you missed it, be sure to check it out. And if you want to see what a bull market slide deck looks like, it's right here.

We're seeing growth stocks resolve higher from bearish-to-bullish reversal patterns. More and more small caps are popping up with new highs. And the strongest value and cyclical stocks that have been leading for years are breaking out to new record highs.

We're buying all of them.

Today, we have two financials and one industrial name. They're all making new all-time highs. Let's take a look.