From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

Director David S. Taylor of Delta Air Lines $DAL revealed a purchase of 10,000 shares in the airline company, valued at just under $300,000.

Meritage Group LP filed a 13G revealing an ownership stake of 5.70% in the cloud-based business management platform Coupa Software $COUP.

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 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 which you can check out here.

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:

Click table to enlarge view

Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Paul Singer’s Elliott Management is now the largest investor in Pinterest $PINS, having built a stake greater than 9%.

While the hedge fund hasn’t filed anything with the SEC yet, it has apparently been in discussions with the social media company for the past several weeks.

We should know more soon.

Warren Buffett continues to increase his position in the oil and gas exploration and chemical manufacturing company Occidental Petroleum $OXY.

Yesterday, Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A filed another Form 4, revealing roughly $250 million of new purchases.

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 our July 13, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by famed tech investor Bill Gurley.

The Massachusetts-based hedge fund Wellington Management Company has been active, as it filed three separate 13Gs yesterday.

The filings revealed passive ownership stakes of about 10% in Whiting Petroleum $WLL and Steven Madden $SHOO.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under the Hood report, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended July 8, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated our Minor Leaguers report.

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.

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

Banking on Support

Banks, broker-dealers, and capital markets have all been underperforming despite the rising rate environment. The entire financial sector has been a disappointment since last year.

When it comes to banks, the Regional Banks ETF is an excellent indicator to measure risk appetite. When times are good, these stocks are participating. 

As you can see in the chart, price is currently holding above the AVWAPs from the 2018 highs and 2020 lows. This level represents a logical potential support zone.

Notice in the lower pane that momentum (as measured by the 14-period RSI) never reached oversold conditions during the current correction. Not many industry groups can say the same.

As long as this economically sensitive group remains above this confluence of support, it is a positive for the overall market.