From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

If you look under the hood, overall this market is weak.

Without Big Tech, there really isn't too much to talk about, except maybe commodities.

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 Kimmy Sokoloff

Every day last week the market would dip in the morning and rally in the afternoon.

This week has been the opposite: We've been grinding lower in the afternoons.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

I'm in New York City along with the rest of the All Star Charts team for the annual CMT symposium this week, so there's no Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session today.

We'll be back with our regular schedule next week.

For today, we figured we'd do a quick post discussing some of the macro themes we're watching right now, as well as a trade idea in one of our favorite names.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Two heavyweights reported earnings yesterday and, as of now, $MSFT came out on top.

Now lets see if it holds on to the gains. 

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Texas Capital Bancshares $TCBI director Robert W. Stallings.

Stallings reported a purchase of roughly $1 million of TCBI stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Today was the first real breakdown for the indices, with $IWM leading the way.

For $SPY and $QQQ it was the first real break below their respective 21-day moving averages.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Ares Management.

Ares revealed a purchase of roughly $4.1 million in Frontier Communications Parent $FYBR.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This market is completely stuck in a range, and we haven't been able to get out of it for at least two weeks.

This morning the indices are back near yesterday’s low.

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.

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, 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.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I think this market might be on hold till Big Tech earnings are behind us.

Time will tell.