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 new highs in...
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...
This market environment is not like others that came before it.
Remember people used to complain that only 5 stocks were driving the market?
Now they complain that those 5 stocks aren't working.
But many others are.
And that's the point.
With new environments comes new leadership. We've seen this happen over many decades.
And those 5 stocks that everyone used to complain were driving the market, have now been laggards for quite some time.
I think people just like to complain.
But if you're like us, and would rather look for opportunities to profit instead of just bitching all the time, then it's important to look underneath the surface.
A great way to visualize the broader leadership vs just a few names is in the equally-weighted chart of the S&P500. This...
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. You can 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. ...
Equity markets around the globe are getting rocked as we close out another rough week.
And then there's China, which is green on the day.
This isn't just a one-day thing. In fact, it's quite the opposite. China has been showing impressive relative strength since bottoming in late October.
Today is just a microcosm of what that leadership has looked like.
It's had our attention for a while already, which is why we're about to discuss the structural outlook for Chinese stocks and outline some long ideas in the strongest names.
Here's the performance of a basket of international equity ETFs since markets bottomed and ripped higher on Oct. 13:
While China didn't bottom until a few weeks later, on Oct. 31, the MSCI China ETF $MCHI has still outperformed other global stock market indexes over this period.
When we look at the performance of Chinese Technology $CQQQ, the leadership is even more pronounced. Most US-listed Chinese stocks fall into the...