This is the video recording of the August 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• Seasonally, this is the time to buy stocks
• S&P500 above key support
• More new highs than new lows for the first time in 2022
• Is Year 3 about to get started? What do other Year 3s look like?
• Average NYSE stock is up 33%, average Nasdaq stock is up 42%
• Financials Bounce Off Pre-GFC highs
• Russell2000 & Nasdaq100 above AVWAP off Covid lows
• Gold & Silver Miners down near multi-year relative lows
• A little Dollar weakness sparked a huge risk-on rally
• New multi-month highs for Discretionary vs Staples
• Apple highest S&P500 weighting of any stock ever
• Free ride in Facebook through the end of the year
• Healthcare plans setting up: $UNH $HUM $CNC $CI
• Breadth Expansion in Industrials
• Indian Banks are the leaders in Banking
• Energy stocks below overhead supply - work to do
• Which coal stocks are we buying
• Lithium continues to act strong, in US and outside US
• Defensive Sectors...

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

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 the stock is about to move in...

The most significant insider activity on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by QH Hungary Holdings Ltd, which reported purchases worth roughly $9.2 million in Quaker Chemical $KWR.

The firm now owns 4,440,989 shares, representing a roughly 22.50% ownership stake.

This summer is the most ideal time to be buying stocks, according to the 4-year cycle.

Q3 of the Mid-term Election years. That's the sweet spot.

Do we see new all-time highs for the S&P500 before the end of the year?

The seasonal tailwinds certainly support that:

Today's Chart of the Day was a unanimous decision internally.

How can it not be this one???

Every single week in 2022 we've seen more stocks hitting new lows than stocks hitting new highs.

In bull markets we see the exact opposite of that.

Well, this week the bulls finally got it done. For the first time all year we saw more stocks hitting new highs than new lows.

It wasn't by much. But they pulled it off.

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 filtered out any laggards that are down 5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. 
• We sorted the remaining...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Everything has been working lately, as the weight of the evidence continues to stack up in favor of the bottom being in for the current cycle.

The short-term breadth thrusts in late July were among the first signs of it. This week, we’re seeing new highs spread out to longer time frames, such as our 63-day indicators.

The percentage of stocks above their 200-day moving average has rebounded higher after undercutting the critical 15% level. This has marked significant bottoms in the past.

Participation has spread beyond growth stocks over the near term, as materials and energy are also rallying and reclaiming key levels. We can say the same for crypto.

And, most importantly, we’re finally seeing upside resolutions. Not only that, they’re holding.

Some of our favorite charts right now are short-term reversal patterns. We’re seeing them all over in growth stocks.

Let’s talk about some we’re buying.

The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes from a 13D filing by Jeff Ubben’s Value Act.

The hedge fund revealed an ownership stake of 6.70% in The New York Times Company $NYT.

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.

The largest insider buy on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by the executive chairman of Energy Transfer LP $ET, who revealed a purchase worth $12.6 million.

Director Matthew R. Cohler revealed an insider buy worth $991,484 in KKR & Co $KKR.

A downtrend consists of a series of lower lows and lower highs.

But the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell2000 Small-cap Index are both making higher highs.

That's, by definition, not a downtrend.