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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This morning it looked like we were heading into the abyss.

Then came a decent bounce, led by tech stocks.

All things considered, the tech sector is holding up well. This gives me some comfort that this is an area we can sell some delta-neutral options premium to ride out this market volatility.

But we're going to do so carefully, defining our risks and playing it conservatively.

Check out this chart of the Technology Sector ETF $XLK:

The horizontal lines on this chart represent areas we can sell April options premium at that feel far enough away for me to like our odds.

We're going to get involved with an Iron Condor.

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

As market volatility spreads to financial sectors around the globe, CEOs, CFOs, and directors of numerous US banks continue to buy stock in a big way.

Here are yesterday’s Form 4s:

• Coastal Financial Corporation $CCB.
• Fifth Third Bancorp $FITB.
• Lakeland Financial Corporation $LKFN.
• Byline Bancorp $BY.
• Brookline Bancorp $BRKL.
• Cullen/Frost Bankers $CFR.
• FB Financial Corporation $FBK.
• Customers Bancorp $CUBI.

However, the most notable insider activity from yesterday wasn’t a regional bank.

It was the largest brokerage in the US.

These are the registration details for our Live Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Monday March 20th at 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 Monday night:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Well, they don't call it Schlump Day for nothing.

The market is getting hit this morning, as the bank mess could be spilling over to other sector.

Today, I'm watching to see how $SPY holds on to the 384 level. If not, we can head back down to 380.

This is the video recording of the March 15, 2023, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Fear runs rampant across financial markets as the US Dollar Index $DXY prints fresh one-month lows.

Wait… what?

I thought the USD was a safe haven.

Perhaps it is. But it appears the gig is up for King Dollar after being the only game in town for almost a year.

So what now, buy stocks?

Sounds good to me.

And I think we can start buying other global currencies too…

Check out the EUR/USD pair:

The euro is swinging back toward our risk level of 1.08 after failing to hold its breakout earlier this year.

It’s pretty straightforward. If and when it reclaims our breakout level, we’re long targeting 1.1450.

Remember, last month, the 1.08 level was our line in the sand. Below there, a USD rally had potential.

On the flip side, if the euro trades above that level, dollar bulls will have a tough time and risk assets will likely enjoy a significant tailwind...

People love the idea of entering options trades with a high probability of success. It’s easy to be seduced by the prospect of winning on 60, 70, or even 80 percent of our trades.

It doesn’t take much imagination to enjoy visions of swimming in all the cash we’d surely be earning with such a strategy. And why not? With that kind of win rate, we’ll often go on runs where we win on multiple trades in a row.

Talk about a confidence builder!

Of course, there is no free lunch on Wall Street. And in strategies with a high probability of success, there is a dark underside that people conveniently like to ignore.

This type of discussion quickly makes us unpopular at cocktail parties. So we avoid it. Many know, but most are unwilling to talk about it.

The trading action in...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The $SPX rallied right to its 200-moving average, and it was rejected.

We bounced in the morning due to CPI, which was bullish for the market. Unfortunately the market is worried about other things.

Banks are really stinking up the joint.

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

They say to buy when there's blood in the streets.

Does this count?

Hardly.

Many indexes around the world are just a few basis points from new highs. Most stocks in America have been rallying for 9 months.

But sure, there's a little blood, with some of these small regional banks disappearing. But depositors are keeping their money, so the only cost is a few people lost their jobs.

Good. Unemployment is way too low anyway.

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

The regional banking panic that began last week has caused a drastic repricing of financial stocks. 

As selling pressure accelerates for a variety of vulnerable banks, executives are coming out and buying shares in an effort to shore up the volatility and put a vote of confidence in their stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We've got CPI up at bat this morning.

I'm sure we'll see wild swings, so it's hard for me to pick a stock before the data.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Strength begets strength.

Buyers taking control of a market heading into the weekend exude confidence. That describes gold bulls last Friday as they drove prices higher into the close.

To no surprise, Gold kicked off the new week gapping higher and rallying more than 2.5%. We call this bullish follow-through. 

So what’s next for precious metals?

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 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...