From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

Sideways has been the theme for most risk assets since they peaked in the first half of last year. Markets have become increasingly messy in the time since.

If we’re talking about US equities, the market is as bifurcated as it’s been in years.

All we mean by this is that depending on what group a stock is in, it could be in a nice uptrend, but it could also be in an ugly downtrend. Stocks and other risk assets are literally moving in opposite directions these days, and doing so with some serious momentum.

At the index level, you can see this split market reflected by trendless ranges. 

When we look to our risk-appetite ratios and indicators for information, we’re not getting much as the vast majority are still stuck in the same ranges they’ve been in for the better part of 12-months.

So, risk assets are a mess and most of our risk indicators are also a mess. Makes sense, right?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the first issue of The Inside Scoop.

We’ve seen a lot of interesting insider activity since we started publishing our scans last week.

So far this year, commodity stocks have been in a league of their own. Energy and cyclical names have continued to rally higher, while just about everything else – especially growth – continues to slide lower.

In the spirit of this split market, today we’ll discuss a number of stocks showing leadership that we think have more upside in the tank. But we’ll also cover a lagging growth stock that we think we can book some quick gains in on a mean-reversion move.

Also, make sure to check out our Hot List Radar report, which includes all the stocks we’re watching that recently experienced bullish insider buying.

Let’s dive in.

We have a couple of billionaire sightings toward the top of today’s Hot List.

And we also have some congressional activity in the energy space to report.

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.

We’re probably not going to follow Nancy Pelosi into American Express $AXP or PayPal $PYPL.

And Warren Buffett’s recent purchase of a large stake in Occidental Petroleum $OXY doesn’t necessarily indicate an opportunity for us, either.

Moves by these big names are just good information.

We don’t typically track small transactions by members of Congress, those in the $1,000-to-$15,000 range.

But a recent move by Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a Republican from Georgia, is worth noting.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 4, 2022. This report is published biweekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Not many people know this, but I used to be a gold bug way back in the day.

Mid-2000s and into the financial crisis and beyond?

I was Mr. Gold Bug.

Any good technician was. That's how price told us to behave.

But then a funny thing happened. A combination of price and common sense proved that being a gold bug was no longer a good idea. That was about a decade ago.

And you know how humans are. Many of those angry little buggers stuck around and held other people's bags this entire time, while stocks and other risk assets have ripped making everyone rich, except for gold bugs.

It's funny how life works.

Because I think we might be back.

It's hard not to be in the Rocks > Stocks club these days.

Here's a good chart showing what's going on:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our March Monthly Strategy Session last Tuesday. Premium Members can click here to review the video recording and download the slide deck.

Non-members can see some highlights from the call 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.

Metals have been gaining more strength with every passing day and have certainly been outperforming the market at present. We have a long setup from the Metals sector this time around as well.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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 also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.