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.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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.

On Thursday, we mentioned the purchase made by the CEO of Asana $ASAN, Dustin Moskovitz, of $350 million  of ASAN stock through a private placement.

Moskovitz has completed the Form 4 filing.

The stock we're looking at this week is part of the Industrial Manufacturing sector. Let's examine which name has made it to our scan this time. Also, check out our latest post on Industrial Manufacturing stocks paving the way for the next leg of the rally!

The Industrial sector has been on our radar throughout this year. The Nifty 500 peaked in October 2021, whereas stocks from the industrial sector continued to show resilience. Our outperformers scan list is full of industrial stocks.

Our Custom ASC Industrial Index is making a new all-time high on an absolute and a relative basis. We are looking for opportunities to add based on price breaking above the consolidating or options to add within an ongoing bullish uptrend. Finally, we'll look into potential multi-year breakouts.

In this post, we'll update the trade ideas from the last post and add a few new actionable setups that look attractive on the long side for the next few weeks and months.

Have you noticed that stocks aren't getting oversold?

So not only did the new lows list go quiet, since peaking almost 3 months ago, but stocks aren't even seeing oversold readings.

The sellers appear to be exhausted.

We define oversold conditions as a 14-day RSI below 30. It's incredibly informative.

If you think a stock is in an uptrend and it's hitting oversold conditions, then it's probably time to reevaluate that thesis.

In uptrends you see overbought readings (RSI >70), and more importantly, a lack of oversold readings.

Look at the S&P500 not getting oversold at all during the Spring and Summer months:

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 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:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

With stocks posting a broad rally this week, we found a handful of names from our Inside Scoop universe that are on the verge of breaking out from bullish chart patterns.

As we discussed on Wednesday’s call, even the leaders are struggling to hold new highs lately.

For this reason, we want to be patient with these setups and be prepared for false starts.

With that said, these are some of the strongest names from the strongest industry groups right now. 

If the market is kicking off a fresh rally, these are the kinds of stocks we expect to lead it.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our September Monthly Strategy Session Tuesday night. Premium Members can click here to watch the recording and review the chartbook.

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.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Loews Corp.

The New York City-based investment conglomerate reported a purchase of roughly $5.7 million in CNA Financial Corp $CNA.

The big insider transaction everyone is talking about this morning isn’t on our list, as there hasn’t been a filing yet.

Last night, during the Asana $ASAN earnings call, the company announced that its founder, Dustin Moskovitz, will be purchasing another $350 million worth of stock via a private placement.