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, which you can check out here.

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.

And here’s how we arrived at it:

• We filter out any stocks that are below their May 10, 2021 high, which is when new 52-week highs peaked for the S&P 500.
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From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

Sideways has been the theme for most risk assets since they peaked in the first half of last year. Markets have become increasingly messy in the time since.

If we’re talking about US equities, the market is as bifurcated as it’s been in years.

All we mean by this is that depending on what group a stock is in, it could be in a nice uptrend, but it could also be in an ugly downtrend. Stocks and other risk assets are literally moving in opposite directions these days, and doing so with some serious momentum.

At the index level, you can see this split market reflected by trendless ranges. 

When we look to our risk-appetite ratios and indicators for information, we’re not getting much as the vast majority are still stuck in the same ranges they’ve been in for the better part of 12-months.

So, risk assets are a mess and most of our risk indicators are also a mess. Makes sense, right?

Let’s...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as a market of stocks.

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions… but there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club. We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports. 

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to The Short Report.

We publish...

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

Benchmark rates around the world have been rolling over as uncertainty sweeps across markets.

Despite the growing pessimism among investors, global yields are digging in at critical levels and bouncing higher in recent sessions. 

We discussed how international yields – particularly those in developed Europe – confirmed the new highs in US rates earlier in the year. 

Today, we’re going to check in on some of those same yields and see if this is still a piece of confirming evidence for rates here in the US.

With the US 10-year hovering around its breakout level at last year’s highs we’re looking for any clues we can get for whether or not these new highs are here to stay.

If the new highs in global yields are holding, that would go a long way in supporting the upside resolution in the US 10-Year.

On the other hand, if we start to see more and more yields around the world fail and roll over, the US will likely follow.

Let’s start with the US 10-year yield:

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I'm sounding like a broken record about elevated options premiums and my desire to be a net seller of options, and for good reason: $VIX continues to hang tight in the 30's. And when volatility is this high, it tends to favor the premium sellers. Not every time, but most of the time.

So during our morning Analyst meeting, me and the team were kicking ideas around for putting an options trade on today. And while there are some tempting candidates for putting delta-neutral credit spreads on -- we all coalesced around the idea of leveraging the high prices of put options here into a long position in Nucor Corp $NUE:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

US dollar strength is broadening as global currencies lose critical levels against it.

Last week, we outlined crucial support levels in the EUR/USD pair. Those levels have since given way, as sellers have taken control of this major forex cross.

Today, we’re going to highlight two other USD pairs that recently sliced through key levels, further paving a path of least resistance that favors the US dollar.

First up is the British pound, GBP/USD:

The pound has been carving out a distribution pattern for the past year.

Yesterday, it completed that pattern by violating a key level of former resistance turned support found at the 2021 lows around 1.32.

Momentum is also registering overbought conditions, confirming the recent breakdown.

As long as it’s below those former lows, we...

This is ugly isn't it?

Below all that support from last year near 350, and I can't see the argument for a long position:

This is a mess at best. A downtrend at worst.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 4, 2022. This report is published biweekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on...

Not many people know this, but I used to be a gold bug way back in the day.

Mid-2000s and into the financial crisis and beyond?

I was Mr. Gold Bug.

Any good technician was. That's how price told us to behave.

But then a funny thing happened. A combination of price and common sense proved that being a gold bug was no longer a good idea. That was about a decade ago.

And you know how humans are. Many of those angry little buggers stuck around and held other people's bags this entire time, while stocks and other risk assets have ripped making everyone rich, except for gold bugs.

It's funny how life works.

Because I think we might be back.

It's hard not to be in the Rocks > Stocks club these days.

Here's a good chart...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our March Monthly Strategy Session last Tuesday. Premium Members can click here to review the video recording and download the slide deck.

Non-members can see some highlights from the call by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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 the stock is about to move...

It's happening.

Investors are bearish.

Especially American ones with a ton of Growth exposure!

Want to know what a bag holder looks like? I encourage you to take a look at your typical American portfolio with a ton of Technology stocks in it, Consumer Discretionary stocks and virtually no exposure to Commodities and Latin American equities.

Of course sentiment is bad. It should be bad!

But this bad?

More Bearish Financial Advisors than Bullish ones?

That doesn't happen very often.