The only real safe haven out there continues to be the US Dollar.
That's it.
When money flows into the Dollar, stocks are under pressure. You may not always see it at the index level, but you can certainly see it when you count and go one by one across the stock market.
The US Dollar bottomed on December 27th. That was also the day that the Advance-Decline line on the NYSE put in its top. It was also the day that the Russell2000 Small-cap Index peaked.
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.
We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. ASC Premium Members can click here to watch the replay and download the chartbook.
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.
Breaking News: "Dow Futures fell 100 points and the VIX rose this Friday on news of new all-time highs for the stock market"
The breadth continues to deteriorate with every week that goes by.
You notice?
You can see it in our trades as well. While the puts on our $SPY and $QQQ haven't started to work yet, the bearish trades on individual stocks are all either working or flat.
It's interesting. What you see in happening in the portfolio, you can also see happening in the market itself.
We saw new all-time highs this week for the S&P500. But we had the fewest stocks in the S&P500 above their 200 day moving average since December. And the fewest above their 50 day moving average since November.
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 Moderna, Square, and Snap.
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.
