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.
In bull markets, that actually happens quite often.
We just saw new all-time highs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P500 (market-cap weighted), S&P500 (equally-weighted), NYSE Composite Index, NYSE Advance-Decline and so much more. Check that out here.
But it's not just a U.S. thing. Look at all the other countries around the world.
This table below shows all the ACWI markets and where their prices are relative to various moving averages - ranging from short-term (10-day) up to long-term (200-day).
Notice how all the developed markets are above all of their moving averages, no matter how short-term or long-term they are:
Nvidia, the largest of all of them by far, reports their earnings this Wednesday 8/28.
We're hosting a LIVE stream starting at 3:45PM ET Wednesday as we monitor the market's reaction to what is probably the most important earnings report of the quarter.
In fact, we think this earnings release is so important, that we put together a FREE Nvidia Earnings Preview to get you prepared for Wednesday's big event.
Again, to be clear, we're not so much interested in the numbers themselves (i.e. Revenues, EPS, etc), but it's actually how the market reacts to those earnings that we're most focused on.
Imagine waking up every day trying to make up reasons for why it's bearish when the Equally-weighted S&P500 is making new all-time highs?
There are people out there who are purposely going out of their way to blatantly lie to people about how historically bearish it is when market breadth is expanding, and more and more stocks are making new highs.
It's like a weird fetish or something. These people need help.
Here's what they're so angry about and why they think the market is about to fall apart:
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.
You guys know that I like to categorize certain things as being the "most important."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the world's most important index. The financial crisis highs are some of the most important levels in market history.
And believe me when I say, semiconductors are the most important industry group in America right now, maybe even the world.
Why do I say this? Just look at the explosive growth. This is a group that just 5 years ago only had 3 companies worth more than $100 billion in market cap—Broadcom, Texas Instruments, and Taiwan Semiconductor.
Today there are 13 semis over that threshold, including the grandaddy of them all, Nvidia.
It has paid to pick our spots wisely in the commodities complex as it's been a very bifurcated asset class this cycle.
Live and Feeder Cattle are carving out distribution patterns.
Energy has been a rangebound mess.
Meanwhile, the relative strength has been in the soft commodities and precious metals.
Gold recently put the finishing touches on a multi-decade accumulation pattern.
Cocoa has resolved a 12-year base and rallied over 400% to new all-time highs.
Coffee is flirting with new multi-decade highs after completing a tactical reversal pattern.
And we're betting that Cotton will participate to the upside with the rest of the soft complex soon. The soft and fluffy commodity is on the verge of trapping the bears below a key level of polarity.
We want to continue leaning into the relative strength in soft commodities.
The Equally-weighted S&P500 is on pace to close the week at a new all-time high.
Based on the early trading in U.S. Markets, and the strength we're seeing in equities around the world, this looks like it's going to happen by the end of today.
Think about it like this: Mathematically it cannot be only 7 stocks going up if the Equally-weighted S&P500 is making new all-time highs.
It's just math.
And this really just speaks to the broadening participation across the market.
Just last month we saw the most amount of stocks hitting new 52-week highs that we've seen in years - on both the Nasdaq AND on the NYSE.
We also so the most amount of stocks on the NYSE that were above their 200 day moving average than at any point this entire bull market.
You cannot tell me that things are getting worse, if mathematically things just keep getting better.
And I preface with all this because when you zoom out, these mega-cap leaders are still drivers of this market.
They're just not the only ones.
But Nvidia is an absolute beast. This thing is now valued at $3 Trillion.
