From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Houthi rebels are rampaging in the Red Sea.

The result: Many carriers are taking the scenic route around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa instead of the Suez Canal. 

The longer route brings weeks-long delays and increased costs as the price to ship a 40-foot-long container has nearly doubled since late November.

It won’t be long before those additional charges trickle down to us, the consumer.

What are you going to do?

Buy marine shipping stocks!

Check out our custom equal-weight marine shipping index posting fresh eight-year highs:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We've also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It's got all the big names and more–but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let's dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here's this week's list:

Last night was one of the most important LIVE Conference Calls that we've had in a long time.

The beginning of the year shenanigans are behind us, the market has settled into 2024, and this all allows us to focus on the most important trends.

This is the video recording of the January 2024 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money." Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

I wouldn't say that volatility is high, but it is higher than what we've grown accustomed to over the past few months.

Tesla has earnings coming up and the animal spirits are out.

Traders do not have patience. They are willing to pay a high number to own call options, and put options as well.

So we're taking advantage of their poor spending habits and happily accepting their donations.

Look at this mess. Can you find me a messier stock?

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

US dollar bulls are in control. 

Fresh highs dot the US Dollar Index $DXY chart. Sellers are nowhere to be found.

The question is, when – or where – will buying pressure ease?

If I had to guess (which I do), I’d focus on 104.25:

A key retracement level and former resistance zone mark my spot.

Plus, price has respected that retracement over the past six months, adding to my conviction.

How long sellers will defend 104.25  – if price even reaches it – is anyone's guess.

I don’t have a Magic 8-Ball. (Wait, actually I do, and it says, “Ask again later.”)

Look what we have here: a $VIX popping its head up to two-month highs.

Are investors getting a little spooked by the prospect of a tricky earnings season?

We'll be able to figure all that out after the fact. In the meantime, we will use these elevated options premiums to help us ride out some portfolio profitability.

I asked my analysts to find me a big cap name that is trading sloppy.

And the one they came with is a widely followed mega-cap name that has been flopping around in a sideways choppy range which, coupled with upcoming earnings, is helping to juice options premiums.

Here's everyone's favorite EV car maker Tesla $TSLA:

Many Small-caps have been leaders from the very beginning of this bull market.

Even through the first couple of weeks of 2024, which haven't been great, Small-cap Industrials are still up over 42% since the Summer '22 lows. Small-cap Consumer Discretionary is up over 37%.

Both of these have outperformed even the S&P500 during this period.

So maybe the "Russell2000" has underperformed. But that doesn't mean that "Small-caps" have underperformed.

It's on a case by case basis.

Here is a list of our Minor Leaguers, for example, which include the strongest stocks between $1 Billion - $4 Billion in market cap:

One of the areas I’ve identified where I can improve my trading is in trade selection. Specifically, my trade avoidance.

Due to my early trading experience as a stock trader, it was ingrained in me during my formative trading years to avoid positioning in stocks that are about to announce earnings.

And for good reason.

Once a stock trade is on, our only real defense against punishing losses is to have a stop-loss order working. That’s fine if you trust yourself to always honor your mental stops. But for most of us mere mortals, the good-til-canceled stop-loss order is our best protection.

99% of the time, a stop-loss order works as intended. Sure, we might suffer a little slippage here and there. But it works like a charm in preventing disaster. Especially for intraday trades.

But for overnight holds, a stop-loss order has its limits. And these limits are fully exposed in the event of a binary news release – most notably earnings announcements.

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.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.