From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Eli Samaha, founder and managing partner of Madison Avenue Partners LP.

Samaha and Madison Avenue reported a purchase of $13 million in Theravance Biopharma $TBPH.

It's amazing what price action can do to change sentiment.

We went from frothy optimism just a couple of months ago, to a much more pessimistic environment for investors.

This table below is a great summary of the different gauges we look at to measure sentiment and what they've done over the past month.

The blue diamonds are the current readings and the gray triangles represent where these were a month ago.

What's on your mind these days?

I'll tell you what I'm thinking about.

I'm used to a market where stocks struggle when the US Dollar are US rates are rising. And that's what we've seen all year.

And while the data certainly points to a market of stocks that have been grinding mostly sideways over the past few months, stocks haven't done nearly as bad as you'd think, considering just how strong the Dollar has been and how much rates have risen.

So the question for me is whether these consolidations are going to resolve higher or lower?

And what the implications might be....

A lower resolution here could be a massive tailwind for stocks.

Remember, during Election years, the market tends to bottom in May ahead of a very strong summer, particularly when there is an incumbent candidate.

If these resolutions are, in fact, to the downside, then that's exactly what I would expect to see happen:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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 Uber and Paypal.

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.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our May Monthly Strategy Session earlier in the week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends.

This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Liam K. Griffin, chief executive officer and president of Skyworks Solutions $SWKS.

Griffin reported a total purchase of roughly $1 million in SWKS shares.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The biggest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Warren Buffett.

Buffett revealed an additional purchase of $7.9 million in The Liberty SiriusXM Group $LSXMK.

Last night was my favorite thing that we do around here.

We had our LIVE Monthly Charts Strategy Session for Premium Members of ASC.

This hour-long, 150-chart Monthly ritual allows us to take a step back, zoom out, and identify the most important primary trends across markets.

There is nothing we do here that adds as much value to my process than preparing for this call.

Premium Members can watch the replay here and download all the slides.

If you're not a Premium Member yet, you can fix that here quickly.

The bottom line is this:

Markets are a mess. They've been a mess. And this year is very different than last year.

Look at the Equally-weighted S&P500 and Nasdaq100.

While these are certainly good overall gauges for the health of the US Stock market, always, in this particular environment they are even more representative of what's going on out there.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

This is the video recording of the May 1, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

I know I've already said it a lot over the past few months, but for those people in the back who may not be able to hear so well...

THIS YEAR IS NOT ANYTHING LIKE LAST YEAR.

The strategies that worked so well throughout 2023 are not the ones working this year.

Last year's leaders are some of the worst stocks in 2024.

The leaders in 2024, in many cases, were some of the worst sectors in 2023.

It's not bad or good. Better or worse. It's just different.

The better you get at adapting to the current environment, the fewer headaches you're going to have.

I'm 42 years old. I've been doing this for over 2 decades.

I have 3 kids.

Do you think I need more headaches at this point in my life? Or fewer?

And so that's why we've adapted our strategies to the current market, instead of trying to go to the beach in the winter, or wear a raincoat on a beautiful sunny day, like many investors like to do because they haven't bothered to check the weather.

So speaking of checking the weather...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The biggest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Mark Miller, president and COO of Goosehead Insurance Inc $GSHD.

Miller reported the acquisition of 10,000 GSHD shares, equivalent to $580,650.