The no coiners are back.

Have you noticed how every chance they get, they'll try to convince you that this is a major top for Bitcoin and the ponzi scheme is officially over?

The no coiners are angry like that. Imagine what it must be like to not have owned Bitcoin this entire time? Ouch.

Here's the "historic top" they're trying to scare you about. 

You tell me, does this look like the end of a major bull market, or does this just look like a normal healthy consolidation within an ongoing secular bull market?

There are opportunities in this space whether you trade Crypto currencies or not.

You've got the ETFs that track the price of Bitcoin and other tokens. You have the Crypto Miners like MARA and RIOT and others, which have presented us with several year-making opportunities this cycle. 

And of course, you have the infamous Microstrategy $MSTR, where Michael Saylor continues to buy more and more Bitcoin with every rally or dip. He does not discriminate. He just keeps on buying.

Here's a zoomed out look at Microstrategy so you can see this was just the highest quarterly close in the history of the company, even...

Today’s most notable transaction comes from John W. Childs, director of Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company $BHVN.

Childs bought 29,000 shares, equivalent to $1,042,393 in its latest Form 4 filing.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from December 31, 2024:

Happy New Year, everyone!

In 2024, the global advertising market grew to nearly $700B, which is expected to reach $1T in 2025.

Fortunes are being made in advertising.

Google, Meta, and Amazon are dominating the industry. However, they're not growing at the same rate as before.

AppLovin is growing the fastest, and 99.9% of Americans have never heard of the company.

$APP rewarded shareholders with an astounding 700% last year.

What's more, we think it's just getting started.

Since AppLovin bottomed in Q4 2022, it has been rewarded for reporting 8 out of 9 times. 

Wall Street loves it when $APP has earnings events.

In addition, we love the chart.

The stock resolved higher a few months ago after carving out a massive basing pattern from 2021-2024. 

It has been screaming higher since then.

We're long $APP above the VWAP anchored to the historic Q4 2024 earnings gap. 

If it can hold above 313, we're looking at 465 and 747 as our initial objectives over the coming 3-6 months.

Tesla wins again. 

Elon has done his job better than any other CEO in the world.

The role of a CEO is to increase shareholder value. Period.

How about a 3000% return in a couple of years, followed by a few years digesting those gains. And then another 180% return from the lows this Spring, adding an additional $800 Billion in market-cap...

Here is a chart showing the highest monthly close in company history. Highest Quarterly close in company history. And the highest annual close in the history of Tesla.

This is what winning looks like:

As of December 31, 2024

Around 50% of Americans are obese. 

It's a huge problem! 

Many have turned to the new "wonder drugs" (GLP-1 receptor agonists) from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Unfortunately, these drugs aren't the cure for everyone.

If you're overweight, fatty liver disease is waiting around the corner for you. 

Nearly 65% of U.S. adults are projected to have a fatty liver disease, known by the acronym MASH, by 2030.

Over the last few decades, dozens of biotechnology companies have tried (and failed) to develop a cure for the disease.

Investors have lost fortunes in the process.

Enter Madrigal Pharmaceuticals.

In March 2024, the company was granted FDA approval for its oral medication, Rezdiffra. This is the first MASH medication ever approved.

The chairman and director of the company, Julian Baker, is one of the most respected names in the entire biotech industry. 

We wrote a deep dive on why we (and many others) follow his fund, Baker Brothers Investments. You need to check it out if you haven't already.

The Baker...

As 2024 comes to a close, I want to take a moment and share some of the most important lessons I learned this year.

Here are ten of them, in no particular order.

1. Skin in the Game: Don’t be afraid to trade—there are no excuses not to start. Today’s world offers countless platforms and opportunities with low barriers to entry. While this field demands a willingness to take risks, you don’t need to invest everything at once. If fear of loss is holding you back, begin with a small portion of your capital. Taking that first step is essential, as true learning only happens through action and experience.

2. Embrace Relative Strength: By identifying and buying the strongest performers in the market, you position yourself to capture alpha and ride the momentum of the true leaders.

3. Keep It Simple: Simplicity breeds clarity and confidence. Overcomplicating strategies often leads to hesitation, doubt and overfitting. Keep your...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolled XME to February options.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

We're in the heart of whipsaw hunting season.

Now is the time.

Every year we see an extended trend, going into late December, that extends just a bit too much, and then completely unwinds once the new year begins and the big portfolio managers are back at their desks.

Look at what happened to US Treasury Bonds at the end of 2013. Look at what happened to Gold and precious metals at the end of 2015. And look at Large-cap Growth stocks at the end of 2022. 

These are just a few examples, just to give you an idea of the power of the end-of-year whipsaw.

So because of experiences like these throughout my investing career, I've made it a point to look for the leading candidates for this end-of-year period that I call "Whipsaw Hunting Season".

We're hunting for this year's epic whipsaw, like the bond ripper in 2014, the Rally in Precious metals in early 2016 and the historic returns of Large-cap Growth stocks in early 2023.

We don't know for sure until after the fact, but this year's leading candidate, to me, has to be the US Dollar.

We have an extended trend. The dumbest money in the world is betting on a stronger...

Today’s most notable transaction comes from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which purchased an additional $15.5 million in VeriSign $VRSN shares, increasing its ownership stake to 13.80%.

This transaction reflects confidence in VeriSign’s ability to maintain its leadership in internet security and stability while benefiting from long-term digital growth trends.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from December 30, 2024:

Point72 Asset Management filed a 13G for StoneCo Ltd $STNE revealing an initial 13G for 5.10% stake.

Jay Monroe, executive chairman of the board of directors of Globalstar Inc $GSAT revealed a purchase of 1,500,000 shares.

Silver relative to gold is the best intermarket ratio for precious metal investors to track.

The line goes up when the animal spirits are alive in the industry.

Earlier this year, the ratio broke a multi-year downtrend line. 

It looked poised to retest the neckline of a massive head and shoulders bottoming formation.

Instead, it's been a choppy mess in recent months, disappointing the gold bugs (including ourselves).

You need to see this zoomed-out chart of silver relative to gold:

With the year coming to an end, I want to share what I believe is the most important chart to consider in 2025.

When it comes to the most critical stocks, it's all about tech. This has been the case for at least 15 years.

Mega-cap tech not only dominates U.S. indexes, but these stocks also play a major role in most investors' portfolios.

The same is true for semiconductors, which serve as both a benchmark for the technology sector and a barometer for the broader market. They are also the posterchild of the ongoing AI revolution.

By evaluating relative trends, we gain insight into leadership and can also assess the market's overall health.

Take a look at the long-term view of Technology $XLK and Semiconductors $SOX relative to the S&P 500 $SPX.

Both ratios...

This post has been made public after the trade was closed and is no longer active. All information shared is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

As long as the pattern in today's trade holds up high, then we can profit in today's trade.

If it follows through on the upside, all the better and we'll achieve our profit target all the sooner. But as long as it doesn't falter, that's all we need to profit.

Either way, we're leveraging what the options market is offering us to increase our odds of success.

Here's a one-year chart of YPF Sociedad Anonima $YPF:

This is a $17B integrated oil & gas company from Argentina.

Here's what my analysts had to say about it in a recent Junior Hall of Famers report:

YPF recently completed a structural trend reversal on both absolute and relative basis.

Price is pressing against a critical resistance level at the 2014 cycle highs.

While some consolidation is more than welcome at current levels, if and...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolled XLV to Feb7 (WEEKLY) options.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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.

Nowadays, 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 new...

I've learned a lot of lessons over many years in the market and I've got war stories for days. 

But with what we do today, I just like to cut right to the chase. I'm going to share my worst defeats and hardest lessons so you can learn from them, just like I did, and hopefully sooner., 

We all have to learn one way or another. 

Today we're talking about the most important companies in America. But what exactly does that mean? Most important? 

It's so open ended and subjective. 

When I was a lot younger, call it 15-18 years ago, I hadn't learned to recognize the sum of the parts of the market. It hadn't hit me yet that it's a market of stocks. It's not just a "stock market". 

This really set me back at the time. I was being too narrow minded and focused on what the media was pointing me to. I wasn't running those numbers myself deciding what actually mattered and what was just noise. 

And when I finally understood that it takes stocks going up in prices to drive the indexes higher, I started to pay more attention to the prices of those stocks. 

But which stocks do we focus more of our...

It's been a historic bull market for stocks - One of the best periods to own equities in American history. I hope you participated along with us.

But believe it or not, the U.S. was not the biggest winner. There are other parts of the world that have actually outperformed U.S. equities - both the S&P500 and the Nasdaq100 returns. 

Look at the Tel Aviv 125 Index, for example, breaking out of this multi-year base to new all-time highs:

You may have heard by now. The so called, "Buffett Indicator" is flashing what we're being told are "warning signals" of an imminent market collapse.

It is the "Buffett Indicator" after all. And Warren Buffett is one of the all-time greats.

But let me fill you in on a little secret. The only people who actually care about this ridiculous excuse for a "market gauge" are journalists writing their glorified gossip columns and charlatans trying to do their best to scare you. 

That's it.

They claim that the "Buffett Indicator" is this magical signal based on a ratio between the total market-cap of U.S. stocks relative to U.S. GDP. 

It's so hilarious that even Charlie Munger came out and said that, "Just because Warren thought of something 20 years ago doesn't make it a law of nature. There is no natural correlation between GDP & Corporate Profits"
 

The "Buffett Indicator" is not a thing. Not even the guy who it's named after thinks it's relevant. 

Meanwhile, here's a chart of Berkshire Hathaway chugging along in a strong uptrend making higher highs and...