Last week, Carl Icahn filed a 13D revealing an ownership position of 5,089,703 shares in the natural gas services company Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX.

Icahn first purchased the stock in the second half of 2021. After a recent acquisition of an additional 2 million shares, Icahn’s total interest is 7.6%.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

From a technical perspective, this rocky market is offering us limited opportunities on the long side.

While we continue to approach most equities with caution, insiders are buying into the volatility aggressively. According to data from Whalewisdom, the ratio of insider buys versus sales hasn’t been this high since early 2020. 

While this is bullish, we still aren’t seeing much in terms of price confirmation.

Something we are seeing is plenty of options to choose from on our Inside Scoop list. 

But while insiders are buying hand over first, the current environment warrants us to be far more selective. We only want to be in those setups that are offering the best risk/reward opportunities. 

This week, we have our eyes on a mid-cap materials name that is coiling just beneath all-time highs. 

A lot of the worst investors I know and people who I regularly like to bet against are preparing for a recession.

Are you?

I've always been in the camp that recessions are the economic implications of changes in asset prices.

And that's because, well, it's just fact. Price leads. The "economy" follows....

So for me, I'd rather just focus on price then. Why would I waste time on the lagging data when we can spend our time on the forward looking data?

And so here we are.

What's it going to take for stock prices (outside of energy) to stop falling?

I think it's more of what we've seen over the past few weeks: A weaker Dollar.

We're looking at new 7-year highs for the Energy Sector Index Fund.

How many stocks and ETFs in America do you think are doing that?

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 to enlarge view

And here’s how we arrived at it:

• We filtered out any stocks that are below their May 10, 2021, high,...

The largest insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Column Group, which reported the purchase of approximately $5.8 million in NGM Biopharmaceuticals $NGM.

Kevin Riley, the CEO and president of First Interstate BancSystem $FIBK, revealed a purchase of approximately 2,900 shares in the regional bank.

It would be irresponsible of me not to make Small-cap Value today's Chart of the Day.

I mean how can it not be?

(OK, Copper's biggest 1-day move since 2013 was a close 2nd)

But the new 6-week highs in $IWN, which represents Small-cap Value, just cannot be ignored!

If these guys are above their former support levels going all the way back to Q1 2021, then a short position in any of these things is a mistake:

This is the video recording of our June 2nd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

The bears are getting creative with their theories.

You notice?

And there are a lot of bears out there. More than we've seen in a long, long time depending on how exactly you're counting them.

So the big question is whether we've seen A bottom or if we've seen THE bottom.

And the truth is no one knows until after the fact.

All we can do is continue to collect the data as it comes in and make the best decisions with incomplete information.

The first thing that needs to happen before stocks can go up, is that they need to stop going down.

That's just math.

And what's interesting is that with lower lows in the price of most major U.S. Indexes a couple of weeks ago, fewer stocks were actually able to make new lows....

Director Meridee Moore of Rayonier $RYN reported a purchase of 12,000 shares of her company's stock in a Form 4 filing.

The CEOs of Solo Brands $DTC, American Assets Trust $AAT, OPKO Health $OPK, SoFi Technologies $SOFI, and Doximity $DOCS all filed Form 4s reporting small purchases of their own stocks.

A funny thing can happen when you don't have any exposure to Technology stocks....

And that's precisely what's taking place in the United Kingdom.

How many countries around the world are pushing up against new all-time highs?

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.