My entire career I've been told by the old timers that many of their biggest winners have come from Mid-caps.

That always stuck with me, to the point where when we win in mid-caps, it always hits me, "Those guys were right!"

To be clear, the traditional definition of a Mid-cap stock is between $2-10 Billion in Market Capitalization (Market-cap = shares outstanding x price of the stock). 

I honestly don't know how long that's been the definition, or who's in charge of making that up. But I will tell you that I don't remember a time when that wasn't the definition.

And I've been around a couple of decades already.

So is anyone factoring in Mid-cap inflation these days? 

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we’ve been working on internally is using various 'bottoms-up' tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we’re doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small, to mid, to large - and ultimately mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B) they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn’t just end there. We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, and Salesforce, to a myriad of others… all would have been on...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

We held our August Monthly Strategy Session last night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

This is one of our favorite bottoms-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 their direction and make them a pretty...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest "Minor Leaguers" report.

We've already had some great trades come out of this small cap-focused column since we launched it late last year and started rotating it with our flagship bottoms-up scan, "Under The Hood."

To make the cut for our Minor Leagues list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $2B. There are also price and liquidity filters. Then, we simply sort by proximity to new highs in order to focus on the best players.

The goal is to catch the strongest names while they’re small and still have serious upside potential. If any of these stocks ever climbs the ranks to the big leagues, the returns could be huge. We’re looking at 5-10x moves just to break into large-cap land!

Let’s dive into this week’s report and see what’s happening in some of...

OK so 2 quick charts for you.

The first one is Johnson & Johnson trying to break out of a 6-month base.

Today we're going to take a look at a long setup in the Chemicals space. This stock has broken out of a big base, and is demanding attention!

Let's take a look at this name.

The Nifty Metals Index is now trading at new all-time highs. At a time like this, it becomes crucial to identify the constituents that are displaying strength.

Let's take a look at some of the names in the Metal Index that are at interesting levels.

After a pause of two months, the Metals Index has broken out above its prior resistance and looks good for a dash ahead! New all-time highs come at the back of participation from the index constituents.

So which names are we looking at in the weeks and months ahead?

First up, is Hindalco.

Hindalco featured in our Trade Ideas pretty often in the first quarter. After a brief pause, the stock looks ready to rally with the break out above the level of 407. The indicator has continuously displayed strength and has been hovering around the bullish regime.

With the move above 407, the stock is trading at an all-time high!

We are bullish above the level of 407, with a target near 606.

Click on the chart to zoom in.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

A major theme we've been hitting on in recent months is that we've reverted to an equity market landscape dominated by US Large-Cap Growth stocks. 

So we know that's where the strength has been. But up until March-May of this year, these relative trends had actually been favoring Small-Caps and Value, and even other parts of the world over the US.

So was this just a counter-trend rally, or the beginning of a sustainable rotation? The real answer is it depends where you look and how you look at it.

But we are definitely seeing some developments that suggest there could be a rotation back in favor of value-oriented and cyclical stocks in the near future.

This becomes particularly clear when we look at the relative trends of some of these groups vs the S&P. And if we see these industry groups break out on an absolute basis - which many of them already are - this could be the extra juice needed for a true relative trend reversal that would put value back in the driver seat.

Let's dive in and...

Initial Public Offerings are exactly that, the initial offering of shares to the investing public. That's the beginning of price history.

This is how it used to be in the old days anyway. Today, we regularly see companies going public so their investors can take profits on their early stage bets. There have usually been several rounds of money raising along the way.

The liquidity is to pay investors, and not necessarily just to raise cash to grow the company.

And that bothers some people. But not me. I don't really care.

I'm only here to try to make a few bucks off the whole thing.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge 

We’ve been super obnoxious about the deterioration in new highs we continue to see in the US.

But the major averages haven't been phased a bit. The S&P 500 and other large-cap indexes keep charging to new heights.

Yet when we look beneath the surface, we're hearing a different story… The vast majority of stocks have NOT been making new highs along with the averages. In fact, we’re beginning to see an expansion in new lows. 

This is a new development that's commanding our attention right now, mainly because these are the weakest conditions we’ve seen many of our breadth measures since last year. 

At the same time (and just like JC mentioned in his...