More and more "things" keep making new highs.

This is the sort of thing that happens in bull markets.

You can see Ethereum and Bitcoin both finding support the past year near former resistance levels from the highs in its prior cycle at the end of 2017:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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...

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 Kimmy Sokoloff

I pointed out in the Live Trading Room how the market might pop first thing in the morning then flatline.

It did just that.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Week starting July 3, 2023 | Edition No. 18 

Our mission at The Buzz is simple: to identify and profit from the most-talked-about stocks on social media. 

Every week, we compile a list of stocks trending tickers that are experiencing a large increase in the investor interest. We use social media data from our partners at Likefolio. 

In each weekly report, we outline 1-3 actionable trades. We also take a closer look at a few other charts from our list. Some weeks will have more actionable setups than others, as we don’t want to force trades. 

With any bottoms-up scan, many of these stocks are at the mercy of the broader market. We will always consider the current market environment when identifying our long/short ideas. 

None of these setups are guaranteed to work. Profitable trading requires you to take small losses and let your winners run. If price closes below our risk levels, we want to take the small loss and move on, to preserve capital for future opportunities. 

As always, feel free to reach out to me at Patrick@thechartreport.com...

The most significant transaction on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by White Mountains Insurance Group LTD, who revealed a purchase of $59.1 million in MediaAlpha Inc $MAX.

White Mountains increased its ownership stake in MAX to 37.50%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Fourth of July!

After Friday's big gap up, the market is kind of flat this morning.

As investors, the first step in deciding whether to buy something or not is to identify the direction in which price is heading.

So many investors out there choose to skip this step.

I never understood that.

We know for a fact that asset prices trend. We know. We all have the data. It's just a fact.

So if we know that, then why wouldn't we begin our process by identifying which direction price is heading?

"Should we buy this stock?"

Well, is it going up in price? Down? Or sideways?

Trend recognition is also really helpful in identifying the type of market environment we're in.

"Are the majority of stocks going up? Down? Or sideways?"

At the end of every month we get a ...

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Wednesday July 5th @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Wednesday evening:

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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. Click here to check it out.

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 filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. 

Then...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The most important crop report of the year has hit.

Yes, it’s generated quite the buzz over the past few weeks, as grain markets ripped higher in anticipation.

Some observers even speculated that Friday’s report was the most important in the history of the agrarian economy.

So let’s round down, be conservative, and call it the most important crop report in 5,000 years.

Seriously, though, it was a big deal, as acreage estimates for soybeans represent the largest miss since the report's inception – or, like, ever, in history. 

More importantly for traders and investors, the report brought increased volatility.

If you’re like me and prefer to sit out these kinds of days, you’re patiently waiting for the dust to settle. 

Meanwhile, if you’re at all put off by the volatility of these futures contracts, I have a vehicle that promises a much smoother ride…

Let’s talk about Archer Daniels Midland $ADM, “supermarket to the world.”

The $41B commodity behemoth has more than 100 years of experience in the grain markets.

And, as JC pointed out on...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw some big gaps for the indices all around today.

It's hard to take trades when it's like this, as the move in most stocks came overnight.

If it can't rally in this market, what happens if the market pauses or pulls back?

I was looking for a good short exposure candidate to balance out my portfolio a little bit and I came across this bearish idea the team published this week that makes a lot of sense for a quick hit if we get it right.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

Pierce Norton, the president and CEO of ONEOK Inc $OKE, filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase of the oil and gas stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Fourth of July weekend!

Monday is an early close for the market, and today is month-end, quarter-end, and options expiration. $SPY is right into the gap I spoke about all week at 438.97.

Let's see how its holds today.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Messy, messy, messy.

If there’s one market description I’ve grown tired of more than others – it’s "messy." It’s my pain trade. 

Interest rates, the US dollar, crude oil, gold – you name it! – all are trendless and range-bound.

One of our viewers during yesterday’s live What the FICC? episode offered up an alternative description: ambiguous. I like it!

But there’s one area of the fixed-income, commodity, and currency landscape poised to break free from this ambiguity…

US real yields!

Check out the US five-year real yield challenging a shelf of former highs:

Yes, we’re talking about yields. But I see a potential bullish continuation pattern. 

Remember, we like buying...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a very mixed market today, with a lot of weakness.

$DIA and $IWM led the pack.