I had a thought this morning while considering a few trades:

Maybe part of why I still struggle at trading sometimes is because there’s a part of me that really, really wants to follow an instruction manual to be successful.

In other areas of my life, that mindset serves me well.

I don’t know how to cook—but give me step-by-step directions, and I thrive. When we used to get HelloFresh boxes delivered, I crushed those meals. I followed the instructions, made something delicious and useful for my family, and felt like a total champ.

Following the instructions = success. I like that. I crave that.

But trading isn’t like that.

I can lay out a well-thought-out plan—how to select the trade, how to size it, how to manage it—and still lose money.

The market doesn’t care that I followed the recipe.

There’s no gold star just for executing cleanly.

And yeah, I know a successful outcome in trading is supposed to mean I followed my plan with discipline. I know.

But that doesn’t make a loss feel any better. Which leads to the uncomfortable question I’ve been sitting with:

If I only thrive when I have a proven...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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.

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

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new...

I'm traveling to Toronto with JC, Steve, and the rest of the team in September. It only makes sense that I should continue adding Canadian exposure to my portfolio. 

I wouldn't want to be an impolite guest, would I?

Today's trade is in a speculative Minerals Miner from Canada.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolling XLC to August Options.
3. Closed XLI position.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Welcome back for another Top Down Trade of the Week. 

This is a classic leadership scan.

We start with the best sectors, then drill into the subgroups. We pick one, and then take a look at the top stocks in it. 

This week, Financials is the big standout—climbing five spots in our sector rankings.

While Technology holds the top spot, it’s worth highlighting Financials this week. 

The consolidation in the Financial Sector SPDR $XLF is likely to resolve higher soon- just like Technology $XLK, Communications $XLC, and Industrials $XLI did this week. 

These are all very different sectors, but they share one critical thing in common. These groups all represent risk appetite. 

The market is on offense right now, so we’re going to keep fishing in risk-on areas. 

...

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.

We’ve been pounding the table on Copper futures since China started ripping last year.

However, it has been a slower start than we anticipated.

Now, our patience is being rewarded... We're seeing evidence that the trade is heating up.

Copper futures are trading at fresh all-time highs as they play catch-up with Gold futures.

We're also beginning to see the Copper miners play catch-up to the underlying commodity.

This has been on our radar for months, but we've only recently seen significant changes.

The red line represents Copper futures, and the blue candlesticks represent the Global X Copper Miners ETF $COPX. 

Historically, these two have danced together.

However, that relationship broke down earlier this year as the futures reached new...

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. 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.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in XLV.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

You remember Vanilla Ice. Don't pretend you don't.

He has nothing to do with today's trade, but the name of the stock reminded me of him.

Broker-Dealers are showing incredible strength right now, I want to get long the chart that looks the best of the lot.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

And here’s how we arrived at it…

We removed laggards which are down 5% or more relative to the ACWI Ex. U.S. Index $ACWX over the trailing...

If you see a bull flag… Buy it. 

It’s what we’ve been telling our clients, and it’s been our mantra internally.

This has been the top pattern to profit from lately. Period.

It’s simple, reliable, and works best in bullish environments like this one.

I’ve been putting more and more money behind these patterns over the past few weeks. Not only do they keep resolving higher, but the reaction legs have been fierce— some going flat-out vertical.

Here are two recent examples to illustrate how I trade this formation.

First up: Micron Technologies $MU.

After a strong leg higher, $MU formed a textbook bull flag. I bought the $MU 7/18 $120 calls...