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...

These days it seems like Energy stocks are acting strong regardless of whether there is strength or weakness in the broader markets.

I'm sure you've noticed.

The Long Energy trade remains in full force if the Sector Index $XLE is above those former highs from 2016-2018:

Ernest S. Rady, the chairman and CEO of American Assets Trust $AAT, continues to appear on our list with his eighth Form 4 filing in the trailing month.

Rady reported his latest purchase on Friday, revealing another 25,000 shares, equivalent to $719,600.

There's one major catalyst that can be a wrecking ball in a potential bull market for stocks.

What's going to stop a year-end rally?

I think if there's anything that can stop it, it's further strength in the US Dollar.

This summer, the markets have only reiterated the negative correlation between stocks and the US Dollar.

A little bit of dollar weakness over the past 6 weeks, or lack of progress to be more accurate, sparked a rally in stocks and crypto assets.

But as Dollar strength came back recently, the pressure on stocks and crypto has returned.

So let's take a closer look.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

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, 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 month. 

Then, we sort the remaining names...

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

Cevian reported an $11.4 million purchase in Autoliv $ALV, the world’s biggest manufacturer of airbags and seatbelts for cars.

Have you taken a look at the new 52-week high list lately?

You're going to find a bunch of materials starting to pop up.

Here are 3 monsters who are helping to lead the way:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as the Hall of Famers, the Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

Jim DeFranco, the executive vice-president of Dish Network $DISH, is on our list again today with his fifth Form 4 filing in August alone.

DeFranco, who co-founded the broadcasting company over 40 years ago, disclosed a purchase of $2.5 million in his latest filing.

The average stock on the Nasdaq bounced over 40% off it's lows this summer.

That's a serious squeeze.

But let's remember that a lot of that stuff is junky and had gotten crushed, so of course they'll have strong bounces.

Over on the NYSE, the average bounce has been less pronounced but still got into the high 20s in percentage terms.

So today let's take a look at how each of the S&P Sectors have performed since the list of NYSE new lows peaked 2 months ago:

We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us towards the very best stocks in the market. We have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base this time around. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.