Contrary to popular belief, Small and Mid-Cap stocks do not always provide better returns than Large-Cap stocks.

In academia, the thesis is that these "riskier" Small and Mid-Cap stocks should provide a higher potential return than more mature "Large-Cap" stocks. If they didn't, then rational investors would not own them because they're not being adequately compensated for the risk they're taking.

In the real world, we know that this theory is absolute nonsense. Instead of the consistent outperformance from the SMID (Small/Mid-Cap) segment of the market, we see periods of outperformance, periods of in-line performance, and performance of underperformance.

Since 2018 the SMID market-cap segments have been absolutely clobbered, but the weight of the evidence is suggesting that we may be at a major inflection point and SMID stocks are beginning a period of long-term outperformance.

Here we're going to explore the SMID resurgence thesis, what it would mean for Equities as an asset class, and how we're taking advantage of it.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

A few week's ago we profiled the strength in Biotech and highlighted the Genomics space as one of the top-performing industry groups. We said we were looking for some consolidation in these areas in the coming weeks and that if and when prices resolved higher these would be areas we'd look to for long opportunities.

It appears the weight of the evidence has spoken with Biotechs pressing back towards fresh highs after consolidating in a tight flag for over a month.

In this post, we'll highlight our top-down approach to look into the Biotech space and offer some trade ideas. Then we'll drill further down into Genomics, provide an update on what we're seeing there, and share some setups in holdings of the ARK Genomic Revolution ETF $ARKG.

Here's the iShares Nasdaq Biotech ETF $IBB.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We talk a lot about the importance of secular leaders. More often than not these groups have a relationship to Technology, regardless of whether they are classified as a Technology stock or not. Tech is everywhere today.

The last time a sector was so pervasive would have to be Industrials way back in the mid-1900's. One could argue Financials had their time in the sun too, but that was short-lived and we all remember how it ended.

Industrials may not be as important as they once were, but they are still important.

I'm fortunate to have a lot of smart friends who are experts on the stock market. In some cases they're traders, or portfolio managers, analysts, financial advisors and best-selling authors. I get to have incredibly insightful conversations with my friends and colleagues every single day. But I understand that most people don't.

So today I'd like to share a video of a conversation I had yesterday with New York City Trader Kim Sokoloff, and about half way through my buddy Joe Fahmy also joined the chat. We discussed process, we talked about a few trade ideas we liked and just had an overall good time catching up.

These are the conversations I'm having regularly. I hope this gives you some insight as to how much I get to learn from my friends:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

In mid-April, we posted a list of 20 key chart levels we were monitoring in some of the most important assets around the world. We've used this as a risk-gauge to measure the internal strength or weakness of the market in the time since.

The list started at 60% bullish, never fell below 50%, and has been stuck at 90% with the same two bearish hold-outs for the past month now. The list has grown consistently more bullish since we began tracking it as more charts continued to break above our levels.

Since the end of May, 18 of the 20 items have been in bullish territory and many have run a good amount from our risk-levels. With the strongest stocks and indexes making new all-time highs and confirming this bullish outlook, prices have spoken and it's time we retire our bull market checklist.

We're adding a new feature to the Premium Membership of Allstarcharts. We're calling it 'Under the Hood'.

Traditionally, we've approached the market using a top/down approach. In other words, we start by looking at stocks globally, the intermarket relationships between them all, and only then do we come to the U.S. and analyze the Indexes, then the sectors and ultimately we drill down to individual stocks. But all of those opportunities in stocks come within the framework of all the other analysis we've done to guide us into those particular names.

With few exceptions, this is our approach. And it's worked well because this process helps us identify the direction of primary trends, and we err in that direction. This keeps the probabilities of success on our side, and not just the favorable risk vs reward that we always harp on.

The IBD 50 has been a great universe of stocks, but it has an earnings and sales growth component to it, so that limits the list. And quite frankly, I couldn't give a damn how much money a company makes or loses. That isn't my problem.

Which brings us to today....

Last week we wrote about the trend change that's potentially underway between the Large-Cap Nifty 50 and the Small-Cap 100 Indexes.

Today, we want to follow up on a trend that we discussed during May's Members-Only Conference Call...Mid-Cap stock outperformance.

Let's just into it.

Last night was our Live Video Conference Call that I host for Premium Members every month. We went over the entire global macro landscape and then drilled down to individual stocks that I think are the best vehicles to profit in the current environment.

One of the areas we continue to like, and continues to pay well, is Internet Retail. The relative strength and positive momentum coming out of these stocks has been off the charts for months.

A nice clean setup in the space is Peloton. I like how prices have been consolidating below their 161.8% extension and ready for their next leg higher:

This is the video recording of the June 2020 Conference Call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

For the week ended Friday, June 12, 2020:

Every week we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Last week was a big one for the bears as most risk-assets sold off aggressively to end the week after a strong start.

Many major Indexes in both International and Domestic Equity Markets printed bearish island reversal patterns, most of which occurred at logical levels of overhead supply. Read our post about it here.

We also just wrote about how the market's secular leaders are holding up best since market internals peaked about two weeks ago. We're going to use our US Index and Sector tables below to highlight the noteworthy relative strength from these areas amid the recent market weakness.

Let's take it from the top and begin with our US Index ETF table.

When stocks as an asset class are in a strong uptrend, or "bull market" as some like to call it, they don't just perform well on an absolute basis, but they also tend to outperform their alternatives. Two perfectly good alternatives to owning stocks are Bonds and Precious Metals.

As you can see in this chart, in early March the S&P500 broke key support relative to both US Treasury Bonds and Gold. All of that former support since 2018 "should" turn into resistance, based on our polarity principles.

And it did: