From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is kind of drifting and seems to be in an indecision mode.

This week could be tough trading with earnings and the Fed.

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.

Crude Oil futures are pushing up against new 3-month highs just as investors have given up on the commodities trade.

No one I speak to thinks Energy leads the way in the 2nd half of 2023.

And I speak to a lot of people who got the past year very right. Even they don't believe...

Here's what I see: Former resistance for Crude Oil in 2018 turning into support throughout the past year:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended July 21, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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.

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by SRB Corporation.

The advisory firm revealed a purchase of $2.1 million in Safety Insurance Group $SAFT.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It's a busy earnings week, and we have an FOMC decision coming on Wednesday.

Futures are up some this morning.

Technical Analysis is the study of the behavior of the market and its participants.

So while identifying price trends is our ultimate goal, sentiment plays an important role in that process.

Prices don't move up or down because of "fundamentals" or "the economy". The price of assets move based on positioning.

When investors are all positioned one way, and are at a consensus, who's left to drive prices further in that direction?

Last summer we saw some of the most pessimistic sentiment towards stocks in history.

Some of that sentiment has started to shift a bit, like in the AAII and II polls. We're back somewhere towards the middle in those. You need, at least, some bulls to buy stocks to have a bull market.

But when it comes to Fund Managers, Cash is still their largest position, and they're most bearish on equities.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a very mixed tape overall today.

The $STLD short I previewed in the Morning Briefing worked out nicely.

Today’s Hot Corner is a short one.

Point72 Asset Management filed a 13G for Chewy $CHWY revealing an initial stake of 5.80%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We're seeing a slight bounce this morning after yesterday's sell-off.

It's monthly options expiration today, so things could get volatile.