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 Trade Exchange. 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...

This is the video recording of our November 7th Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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.

Equal Over Cap-Weight

The equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) emerged to fresh multi-year highs relative to the cap-weighted S&P 500 index (SPY). Seeing this ratio break out of a multi-year base is a development that indicates a healthy expansion in participation and is further evidence of improving market internals.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market started off strong and finished even stronger.

We saw a  midday lull, but that was bought up!  The $SPY broke above its 50-day moving average at roughly 379.

Range Bound and Restless

The S&P 500 was down last week but remains above its June lows and below its August highs.

More Context: We can look up at the summer highs on the S&P 500, but as long as more stocks are making new lows than new highs the risk is that it is the summer lows that are in jeopardy of being broken. The degree and duration of downturns since 2015 has varied but a clear pattern has emerged: rallies are difficult to sustain if fewer stocks are making new highs than new lows. Clearing the August high for the S&P 500 likely means seeing the NYSE + NASDAQ new high lists getting longer than the new low list (which has happened only twice in the past 50 weeks).   

We take a Deeper Look at important ranges across the market and where we are seeing important breakouts rather than restless investors trying to anticipate the next move.  

This is the one we all need to watch.

I don't think it has to be any more complicated.

The strategy here is very simple:

If you read the subject line and didn't immediately know that this post was about energy stocks, then you probably watch too much television.

FANG has always been a Texas-based Oil & Gas E&P stock.

It has nothing to do with mega-cap growth.

It's quite obvious that many investors bought the wrong FANG.

And I say good. That makes this unwind we've been witnessing that much more explosive.

The more people getting smoked in Tech and other growth, the better it is for the rest of us who aren't stuck in that garbage.

My suggestion is to ignore the gossip columnists and focus some more on the only thing that actually pays anyone: Price

Here's Diamondback Energy $FANG breaking out this week to new all-time highs:

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.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was positive as 64% of our list closed lower with a median return of -0.89%.
• Silver $SI was the big winner again, closing with an 8.55% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a weekly loss of -6.85%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs, which remains at 6%.
• 21% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs.
• Meanwhile...

With strength starting to stand out in more and more sectors, we have a few good setups that we like for long trades here.

In chatting with our Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza today, he pushed me in the direction of today's trade by highlighting the fact that if this one moves, its likely to move much faster and stronger than a couple of the other ideas I was interested in.

And the options in this stock are set up in a way that we can play this idea with a simple long calls trade. I like that. So let's dig in.

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by Vertiv Holdings $VTR Director Joseph Deangelo.

Deangelo disclosed a purchase of VTR worth roughly $1 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We've seen a big gap up in the futures this morning, and we're right at resistance at $SPX 3,800. The next level above is 3,804 to 3,811.

$SPY resistance is at 379.60. Support is at 376.35, then 374.20.

The only way anyone gets paid around here is to sell things at higher prices than where we buy them.

And not necessarily in that order.

Do you have a better way?

I've been doing this for 20 years and I have never seen any other way to profit.

You might enjoy pretending to know "why" a stock or group of stocks may be moving. But the market doesn't pay you to pretend to know why.

The market only pays us when we sell things at higher prices than where we buy them.

And this is all so funny to me, because I constantly see so many people focusing all their attention on everything BUT price.

That never made any sense to me.

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

Metals have been one of the weakest areas of the market this year.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the materials sector, commodity space, base and industrial metals, or gold. These assets have carried nothing but downside risk.

But mix in a little dollar weakness, and we see an impressive display of strength. Metals are finally looking like they have something to prove.

Yes, it’s only one day of action. But it’s a day worth noting…

Check out the breakout in copper futures, posting its largest single-day return since 2009:

This is a big development for commodities and risk assets in general.

Copper has found support at its prior cycle peak and is now resolving higher from a three-month consolidation. One of the most-watched leading economic indicators is signaling all is well.

Based on Dr. Copper's bullish breakout, we would expect metal and mining stocks to join the party. ...

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 out the International Hall of Famers.

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...

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

With slow but steady improvement in breadth over the past few weeks, we have more and more stocks rising to the top of our scans and making new highs.

Due to continued weakness from the largest stocks, the indexes are masking a lot of this internal strength. But that's OK; we don't have to trade the indexes or any of those issues!

We're finally re-entering an environment where we have plenty of options on the long side.

Here are some new favorites from our Inside Scoop universe...

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Rules Need Application To Be Useful

Market legend Marty Zweig was known for his investing rules. The first among them addressed the importance of staying in harmony with the underlying trend in the market. Good rules are great guides - we ignore them to our own peril. 

Why It Matters: Rules need to be more than trite and convenient sayings. But given that we each have our own temperament and time frames, our individual applications will likely vary. For me, recognizing that the trend is my friend and not fighting the tape means respecting the direction of the long-term trend in the S&P 500 and the advance/decline line based on net new highs for the NYSE + NASDAQ. All of the net gains for the S&P 500 over the past two decades have come when at least one of those is rising. Right now, as has been the case almost continuously since February, they are both falling. That is not a tape I want to fight.   

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw a lot of movement in the indices today.

The $SPX hit resistance near the 50-day moving average around 3,800 and reversed lower but then rallied into the close.