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.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

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.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new 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...

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...

If the world was coming to an end, and stocks all over the world were about to collapse, then these 3 charts would likely not be going up.

If the argument is that the relentless selling was limited to overexposure in US Growth Stocks, then these 3 charts should continue to rise.

The first one is Berkshire Hathaway. Tell me this isn't an uptrend:

It's hard to ignore the fact that some of the worst stocks on the planet are near old support levels.

One group that stands out for sure are the Marijuana stocks. We've seen a ton of activity from C-suite executives buying their own company's stocks recently. And not just exercising options, but going out in the open market and buying the stock just like you or I would.

Look at the Alternative Harvest Index Fund all the way down to those former lows from early 2020:

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Tuesday March 1st @ 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 Tuesday evening:

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

Commodities have been on a tear to start the year.

The CRB Index is up almost 16% year to ate, while our equal-weight commodity index is up 9.5%.

But, with such explosive moves over the past few months, we think it might be time for some corrective action.

Our commodity indexes and a handful of individual contracts are now testing potential resistance levels.

Though we still think this bull market has plenty left in the tank, it’s starting to look like commodities are due for a break over the short term.

Let’s discuss some of these charts now.

First up is the CRB Index:

The benchmark commodity index is running into an area of former support at the 2012 and 2014 lows, coinciding with a key Fibonacci retracement level measured from the 2011 peak to the 2020 lows.

The CRB Index has been on a tear, posting 10 straight weeks of higher closes....

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

We've been joking internally that the new highs list is a lot longer when you include ADRs.

As US stocks come under increasing pressure and the rotation into value becomes more pronounced, international stocks are garnering some well-deserved attention.

We recently wrote about some of our favorite regions around the world and discussed bullish setups in a handful of international country ETFs, with a heavy tilt toward value.

We also have a bi-weekly scan where we focus exclusively on the largest ADRs, which are just foreign companies listed on US exchanges. It's called the International Hall of Famers, and you can check it out here.

The only problem with it is that a lot of the cyclical stocks that are showing leadership have smaller market capitalizations, and our universe is focused only on large caps.

As such, we thought we'd run a scan to identify some of the strongest international stocks between a market cap of $1B and $35B.

...

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.

Here’s this week’s list:

And here’s how we arrived at it:

• We filtered out any stocks that are below their May 10th 2021 high, which is when new 52-week highs peaked...

US Treasuries are off to their worst start in more than a decade as rates rise across the curve. 

The US Aggregate Bond ETF $AGG is down more than 4% year to date. Treasuries can’t manage to catch a bid. And High-Yield Bonds $HYG have fallen off a cliff.

But this could all change quickly. Especially if stocks continue to sell off. 

Money has to go somewhere as it flows out of equities. And with many bonds testing critical levels, it would make sense to see prices mean revert, at least in the near term.

Let’s take a trip around the bond market and discuss some of the key levels on our radar.

First up is the long duration Treasury Bond ETF $TLT:

After dropping 5.4% in the last three months, TLT has paused at a logical area of former support around 135. This the same level price rebounded from late 2019 and early 2021.

The last time TLT bounced off these levels was when many risk assets peaked back in May of last year. We’re watching to see if we get a similar reaction from markets this time around.

...

On today's episode I sit down with Financial Advisor Stephen Weitzel. Stephen and I have known each other for many years. We're both big fans of Technical Analysis, good food and college football. So this was a lot of fun!

Stephen walks us through his journey of first becoming a Financial Advisor, how helpful Technical Analysis has been for his practice and the journey towards $1 Billion in assets.

I've had a front row seat to Stephen's growth, both as a business owner and as a Technician. It's been really cool to see and I'm going to keep rooting for him and his team.

I always like to get different perspectives on the podcast, and I think this conversation is a great compliment to a lot of the other episodes we've done over the years.

Make sure to follow Stephen Weitzel on Twitter @stephenweitzel and check out Stephen's firm Reveille Wealth Management.

Enjoy!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

How about that volatility!?

I don't know about the rest of you, but days like these make me grateful that I get to do this for a living.

The Nasdaq 100 $QQQ opened the day down over 3% and closed up over 3%. The last time that happened was November of 2008.

How's that for excitement?

Intraday reversals and wide ranges are normal during periods when volatility grips the market the way it has so far this year.

But today was different than the other tumultuous sessions we've encountered in recent months. We're finally seeing some strong evidence of a bottom.

Let's talk about it.