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 now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.
The NYSE Oil Index includes the leading companies involved in the exploration, production, and development of petroleum.
This index dates back to 1984 so it's got some history to it.
It also includes a lot of Energy stocks headquartered outside the United States, giving investors a much more global perspective, as the NYSE tends to do.
On Friday, this index closed at the highest price ever.
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 Airbnb and Uber.
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.
We held our April Monthly Strategy Session earlier this 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.
How I learned it more than a couple of decades ago was that there were 3 asset classes: Stocks, Bonds AND Commodities.
But a funny thing happened throughout the 2010s. Commodities did so poorly, particularly when you compare their performance to Stocks and Bonds, that investors completely forgot that Commodities were an asset class.
Many newer investors never even knew in the first place.
But yes folks, there are 3 asset classes. And that 3rd one that everyone conveniently forgot about is the one that is dominating returns this cycle.
Here is a ratio of Commodities to Bonds in a strong uptrend as everyone keeps telling me that interest rates are falling.
It's actually the exact opposite. Interest rates keep going up, as Commodities rip higher and bonds keep falling apart.
