Precious metals have been on an absolute tear this year.

Gold is stair-stepping to new all-time highs, and silver recently shattered through resistance to levels we haven't seen in...

It was only 8-months ago when gold futures put the finishing touches on a massive basing pattern. 

Since then, we've seen the yellow rock rally over 30% to new all-time highs and achieve two of our price targets. 

In addition, the bellwethers of the industry like Wheaton Precious Metals have moved into blue-sky territory and the junior miners have posted bullish momentum thrusts.

And we're betting on participation continuing to expand for precious metals stocks and futures contracts like palladium.

Let's talk about it:

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

1. New position in XRT.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
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 highs...

Despite being defensive, consumer stocks can make huge moves. 

Stocks like Monster Beverage, Celsius, and Sprouts Farmers Market are some of the best-performing names in recent history.

Today, we're outlining a consumer stock that rallied 300% in 6-months off its 2022 low. 

Since then, the stock has carved out a textbook accumulation pattern, which the market resolved last week following an earnings report.

With the short sellers caught offside, we're betting this breakout will spark a short squeeze and a fresh uptrend.

Let's get into the details:

Today’s largest insider activity comes from none other than Control Empresarial de Capitales SA, betting strongly on PB Energy Inc $PBF with a hefty $17 million purchase, according to its latest Form 4 filing.

This marks Control Empresarial’s fifth buy in the past month, suggesting a powerful vote of confidence from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s investment firm.

With this latest addition, Control Empresarial’s ownership stake jumps from 21.5% to 22.5%, underscoring its commitment to the energy sector.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from November 1, 2024:

Tyra Biosciences $TYRA just saw a notable insider move, as CFO Alan Fuhrman scooped up 9,500 shares. 

When the CFO dives in like this, it’s a telling sign. After all, who better to know the numbers, future plans, and projections...

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.

Jeff Macke is the person I go to when it comes to all things Retail and Consumer Brands. He's been doing this longer and better than anyone else I can think of. 

He joined us Thursday night LIVE for Amazon and Apple's earnings. I couldn't imagine trying to understand what was going on without Jeff giving us the play-by-play and color commentary.

Check out the Full Conversation and LIVE reaction to the numbers. He absolutely nailed it. ...

November marks the beginning of the best three-month period of the year for stocks and a brand-new NBA season. Moreover, the sportsbooks have priced in my local OKC Thunder as the Western Conference champions.

It's a fantastic time to be alive.

Now is also a great time to take a step back and assess the underlying trends.

Earlier this year, we outlined our Fab 5 Charts for a 2024 equity bull market. 

One of the five key groups we selected was homebuilders, which have been on an absolute tear:

Homebuilders have experienced tremendous markup phases this cycle, nearly doubling in many instances. The visual above shows the SPDR Homebuilders ETF $XHB components sorted by proximity to the 52-week low (the y axis) and 52-week high (the x axis). The 14-day RSI is the size of each bubble.

The homies have been one of the hottest groups of stocks...

If you're living on this planet, credit is everything—it shapes economies and tells us whether we’re in a "risk-on" or "risk-off" environment. 

And there's no better indicator of investor sentiment than the bond market.

With over $140 trillion traded daily, bonds are the largest asset class in the world, spanning all around the globe, from retail investors to governments.

One way we use bonds for information is by analyzing credit spreads as a signal for stress in the market. 

Right now, credit spreads are not warning of elevated risk, they are doing just the opposite. Giving bulls the green light.

Credit spreads are tightening and hitting multi-year highs when comparing junk bonds to treasury bonds.

We’ve overlaid the HYG/IEI ratio with small caps to show how similar the two charts look.

Despite the new highs in HYG/IEI, the S...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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...

Ok, we're going to head abroad and as far away from election risk as we can.

In fact, we're to head to Sweden for today's trade. Is that far enough away?

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

1. New position in XME.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Uncle Warren strikes again!

In a fresh Form 4 filing, Berkshire Hathaway reveals a substantial new purchase in Sirius XM Holdings Inc. $SIRI, scooping up a cool $60,692,844 in shares.

This marks Berkshire’s third buy in recent months, solidifying Buffett’s position with a whopping 112,504,729 shares, an ownership stake now amounting to 33% of Sirius XM’s outstanding shares.

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

Mario Gabelli's GAMCO Investors shook things up today with a 13D filing, revealing a notable increase in its ownership of Mueller Industries $MLI, from 2.92% to 4.08%. 

With this latest move, MLI now claims the top spot in GAMCO’s portfolio.

Global markets sold off hard yesterday, dragging crypto lower.

Does that worry me?

Consumer Discretionary stocks are a reliable gauge of risk appetite and market health.

Consider these as automobiles, retail, and homebuilding—industries that offer products and services consumers purchase with their discretionary income.

When investors favor these stocks, it indicates a higher level of risk-seeking behavior.

One simple way to assess them is by comparing their performance to the broader market.

The chart below illustrates Large Cap Consumer Discretionary Sector relative to the S&P 500, potentially forming a major 10-year top.

Notice how this ratio has been holding near its lower bounds for quite some time.

If you believe the bull market still has legs, the expectation would be for discretionary stocks to start outperforming.

On the other hand, if you bet this top completes, you expect risk assets to come under pressure.

So, what do you think?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Alfonso

Below is the 5th ASC Mastermind Course. In this course, I discuss sentiment and seasonality, and how we use it to further our analysis.