From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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:

We’ve talked a lot about the unusual options activity in commodity stocks like Freeport-McMoRan $FCX in recent weeks and months. 

Yesterday, we saw more of the same, as options traders made some major splashes in April monthly calls for both the oil services giant Schlumberger $SLB and the British integrated oil and gas name Shell Plc $SHEL.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Yesterday, we discussed one of our favorite stocks from the hot list right now and today, we have another new idea.

Before we get there though, let’s reiterate yesterday’s trade.

Durable Capital Partners continues to be active, now with an $8.5 million purchase of software company Clearwater Analytics Holdings $CWAN.

In recent weeks, the investment firm has also made filings for purchases in Duolingo $DUOL and Warby Parker $WRBY.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Executives and corporate insiders have been busy to start the week as we have another long list of Form 4 filings today.

Among them is another large purchase by Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund in the British asset management firm Janus Henderson Group $JHG.

This is the video recording of our March 16, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

For more than a year, most of the market and many of our risk ratios have been a trendless mess.

High Beta vs. Low Volatility, Copper vs. Gold, and our custom Risk-On vs. Risk-Off ratio have all gone nowhere since the beginning of 2021.

The Australian dollar/Japanese yen also falls into the range-bound category, as the risk-on pair looks a lot like the ratios we just mentioned.

But AUD/JPY has been showing resilience the past few weeks and is currently challenging the upper bounds of its multi-month range.

Since most risk appetite indicators aren’t giving us much in the form of new information these days, an upside resolution from AUD/JPY would be a major development. 

It hasn’t happened yet, but things are certainly setting up that way.

In today’s post, we’ll dive into one of our favorite risk-on/risk-off gauges – the AUD/JPY cross - and discuss what it’s currently suggesting about risk-seeking behavior.

Abdiel Capital filed a Form 4 yesterday revealing a purchase of an additional 105,500 shares in the software company Appian Corp $APPN.

The firm also made a large purchase in February in the amount of roughly $6.5 million. It now owns nearly 6 million shares of APPN, representing an ownership stake of approximately 14%.

Another software stock, Shift4 Payments $FOUR, had insider activity reported, as the chairman of the board and CEO, Jared Isaacman, filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase worth approximately $1.7 million. 

Isaacman now owns 334,742 shares of FOUR.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1B 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.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1B and $4B.

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.

False Start of Failed Breakout?

The markets have been a bifurcated mess for more than a year now. During this time the relative strength from commodities and commodity-related stocks has stood out. Both have been on a tear and continue to rip higher. But despite the broad strength in commodities, Copper has gone nowhere since many risk assets peaked in May of last year.