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.
"JC, how could you say we're already in the 8th Month of a new bull market???"
The things people call me over email or on twitter are not something I would repeat in front of my mother, or daughter, and certainly not in front of any of you guys.
But I'm a big boy. I spent a lot of time on trading floors, dugouts and locker rooms. I've heard way worse.
It is interesting, however, to observe the feedback I get from just some basic arithmetic.
This isn't like some random opinion I have about the economy, or Fed policy or earnings. This is just 3rd grade math.
Are more stocks going up? Are more stocks making new highs? Or are more stocks going down and making new lows?
Since June, the answer has been up and certainly not down.
Notice how the new lows list peaked in Q2. Even though some of the large-cap growth-heavy indexes made new lows later in the year, even for just a hot second, by that point there were almost no stocks left that were going down.
The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Abdiel Capital Management LLC, which reported a purchase worth roughly $8.7 million in Appian Corporation $APPN.
The hedge fund now has an ownership stake of nearly 12%.
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.
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.