The big insider news from Thursday came in a Form 4 filing by RA Capital Management.

The firm reported a purchase of 2,200,000 shares of Nkarta Inc $NKTX, representing an ownership stake of 23%.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Simon Groom, who reported a $49 million purchase in the broadcasting company iHeartMedia $IHRT.

This is the video recording of our April 27, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

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 bottom-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, to 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.

The largest insider transaction on today's Hot List is a Form 4 filing by Ernest Garcia II, CEO and co-founder of Carvana $CVNA.

CVNA just raised an additional $1 billion via a private offering of perpetual preferred stock, and Garcia has taken a large allocation.

He remains CVNA’s largest shareholder by a wide margin.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

Earlier in the month, we pointed out breadth deterioration in the US dollar.

While the dollar pressed to new highs against the yen, the pound, and the euro, it struggled to gain ground against commodity-centric and emerging market currencies.

The lack of broad strength had us questioning the validity of the recent rally in the US Dollar Index $DXY. 

That’s changed recently.

Today, the dollar index is catching to new highs against a backdrop of broadening strength, not weakness. Now that we’re seeing dollar internals flip and start to confirm these new highs from the index, this is not a trend we want to fight.

And, to be clear, we haven’t been. 

It’s been just over three weeks since Elon Musk filed his original 13G and revealed an investment in Twitter $TWTR.

Now, it looks like he’s about to take control of the entire company.

Yesterday, it was announced that Twitter has accepted his $44 billion offer to take over the company and go private.

Here’s what else is happening in the world of insider activity…

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The market has become increasingly volatile as selling pressure spreads to the strongest stocks.

As bullish opportunities become more scarce, we’ve had to become more selective in terms of our long exposure.

This is because we’re trend followers. We want to be involved in uptrends, and as more and more uptrends come under pressure, we have fewer options. It’s as simple as that.

But when it comes to corporate insiders and activists, they actually become more active when stocks are under pressure. They love buying weakness.

So while there are fewer opportunities for trend followers like us, there is a growing list of opportunities for bargain-hunters like them. 

As such, insiders have been very active in recent weeks as stocks continue to slide. But they don’t only buy downtrends. There has been some activity in names showing impressive relative strength as well.

Let’s talk about a handful of leading stocks that insiders have shown interest in recently.

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 their direction and make them a pretty penny.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

Selling Spreads

Speaking of leaders, even the strongest stocks have come under pressure in recent sessions. There was no good place to hide toward the end of last week as stocks were being sold indiscriminately. We saw the start of this on Thursday as the market leaders came under serious pressure. Friday, that volatility accelerated as investors shrugged off record earnings numbers and took profits across the board.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen money rotate into defensive groups or growth stocks in sessions where cyclical stocks have sold off. That wasn’t the case last week as the market was a sea of red.

This morning, the big market news is that Twitter $TWTR and Elon Musk are getting close to striking a deal for the eccentric billionaire to take the company private.

This is a dramatic turn of events from just last week, when the company announced it had adopted a “poison pill” to ward off Musk’s takeover efforts.

The latest reports suggest a deal could be finalized as early as today.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.