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.

If Semiconductors actually completed this massive top relative to the S&P500 then bull market cancelled.

Period.

For me, it was that simple. This is one of the largest and most important industry groups in America, and the rest of the world for that matter.

Losing Semi's would be like losing one of your legs. You wouldn't be able to walk anymore. 

People keep telling us, "2024 was the year of artificial intelligence." 

That's bull shit, and we have the data to prove it. Last year was a year for the gold bugs. 🥳

Here's an overview of how each asset class performed in 2024:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended January 3, 2025. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation 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's no way the S&P500 can rally again this year, right?

We just had 2 consecutive years of historic returns. The Nasdaq literally doubled since the end of 2022. 

Total Crypto Market-cap is now at $3.4 Trillion. It was only $750 Billion 2 years ago. You do the math!

The S&P500 was up 24% in 2023 and then up another 23% in 2024. 

How could things possibly get any better than this? I mean with the Fed, and the Inflation, and the Trump, and the Recession and the imminent crisis they all keep telling us about.

How could stocks possibly go up again in 2025? After the historic returns we just saw in back-to-back years?

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

It's a new year and the market is looking forward. 

It doesn't matter what happened last year, as far as our decisions are concerned. But let's not forget that humans are irrational, and they will certainly let the past year or two impact their decision making.

They can't help themselves. So it's up to us as traders and investors to extract those dollars for our own selfish reasons. 

We're here to make money. Period. Taking advantage of human flaws is a great way to do that, as I've been showing you here every day for over a decade. 

Yesterday we discussed the irrational behavior we're seeing from investors in the middle of a bull market. They're running scared, just as market breadth is improving to the upside, across multiple timeframes.

The Retail Investors are scared to death. And that's a good thing.

We don't want individual investors too optimistic. That's when stocks sell off. It's when they're pessimistic and worried that you see the best forward returns.

Go back and see for yourself. It's all public information. These are the people we want to fade. This is the "Dumb" money, so to speak.

Dig this. The first sentiment data for the year just came out from the American Association of Individual Investors with the fewest number of bulls since April of last year.

In the middle of the bull market, they're crazy scared. 

Good.

Now keep in mind, this is specifically what they're saying. 

But what are they doing?

Well, the Put/Call Ratio just hit new 4-month highs. This means investors are buying insurance (Put options) at a much faster rate than they're betting on higher stock prices (Call options). 

That's also evidence that they're scared. Why else would you be buying insurance at such a fast rate?

Now, what else are they doing?

Did you know China outperformed the United States stock market in 2024? We have the data.

We think this relative strength will persist, and if that's the case, don't forget about copper!

We discussed the long-term positive correlation between Chinese equities and copper futures a few months ago. 

Why does this relationship exist?

China is the world's largest consumer of refined copper and accounts for over 50% of global consumption. 

If one is going to work, so will the other.

More importantly, copper futures are testing a key level of interest:

The market seems ripe for a good short squeeze. Don't you think?

Despite many market participants questioning the robustness of the current bull market, the worst stocks in the world keep outperforming. 

These stocks will get blasted and dramatically underperform in a true bear market environment.

We're seeing the opposite.

So we've gone through our Freshly Squeezed universe, and one name stands out.

Eos Energy Enterprises $EOSE, a $1.2B battery stock.

It's sporting a 27% short interest and a 7x days-to-cover ratio.

When the short sellers overstay their welcome (as they have in this instance), we look for opportunities to take the other side. 

Why? The risk versus reward is skewed in our favor.

Here's how we're trading $EOSE:

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: