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...

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

What a wipeout in the indices. We've almost retraced all of last week’s move.

The $SPX broke below 4,050, and it was downhill all day. 

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices are pulling in this morning.

We're still in consolidation mode after last week's rally.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filed by Wayne P. Rothbaum, the president of Quogue Capital LLC.

The investment firm revealed a purchase worth $65 million in Iovance Biotherapeutics $IOVA.

Let me ask you this: In bear markets does it historically get easier and easier to find stocks making new all-time highs?

Where I grew up, new all-time highs, yet alone more and more of them every day, are not something that we normally see in bear markets.

And here we are. I can't remember the last time it was this easy to find stocks breaking out to new highs. And not just new 3-month highs or even 52-week highs.

Stocks are breaking out to new ALL-TIME Highs.

And not just in one or two sectors.

We're seeing it in Financials, Industrials, Technology, Energy, Healthcare, Staples, Telecom and more.

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 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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

After this morning’s dip lower, the $SPX mostly based around its 200-day moving average.

Overall, it was a tough week. We traded lower the first part of the week, and then came Powell...

I'm not sure what everyone is so angry about, but I like it.

The pessimism out there is off the charts.

Investors are scared.

Risk aversion is dominating. Risk appetite is non-existent.

This is the best time to buy stocks during the entire 4-year Presidential Cycle.

And guess what investors are doing?

They've been buying stocks...

The largest insider buy on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Vishay Precision Group $VPG Director Wes Cummins.

Cummins revealed a purchase of VPG worth $802,067.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We have jobs data being released at 8:30 .m. ET this morning that could set the stage for the indices today.

The market based nicely yesterday. As long as the 200-day moving average on the $SPX at 4,050 holds, there's room for higher prices.