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.
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 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.
Commodities are losing ground as money flows back into stocks and bonds in hopes of a Santa Claus rally.
Yet fresh strength in equities isn’t completely leaving commodities in the dust. In fact, numerous bullish developments are underway for raw materials.
Dr. Copper is working its way higher. Crude oil is refusing to throw in the towel despite increased selling pressure. And softs such as orange juice, cocoa, and sugar are flying toward fresh decade highs.
That doesn’t sound bearish to me, especially when considering new buying opportunities in the grain markets…
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.
The dollar has gone from slinging cheese to lobbing cookies.
Sellers finally got ahold of the US Dollar Index $DXY on Tuesday, sending it on its steepest single-day decline since October 2022.
Recall what followed for the dollar…
The DXY formed a major top and fell victim to not one but two subsequent 1 percent-plus daily drawdowns.
Check out the DXY chart with the one-day rate-of-change in the upper pane:
The DXY dropped almost 1.5% during Tuesday's session. That’s a huge move for a currency (with the exception of the Turkish lira and perhaps the Polish zloty).
Today, a "darling" company in the media thanks to new obesity drugs and other good news hitting the media airwaves is selling off. In fact, its having its worst day relative to its sector peers in many years.
Someone forgot to tell Eli Lilly $LLY that a new bull market run may recently have gotten under way. Of course, it was already way ahead of the game. In fact, look at this long-term chart:
These aren't usually the trends I like to take the other side of.
But perhaps it's gone on a little too long and it's ready to pause and retrace?
This stock could get cut in half and the long-term trend would still be intact.
When we zoom in a little closer, we see a very notable (and sizeable) gap from this summer where the stock jumped from $450 per share to north of $500 per share overnight: