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

1. New position in SMH.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. Exited IGV at Profit Target.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Participation has been expanding in the commodities markets.

We've nailed trades in natural gas, crude oil, copper, and more. 

But one continues to shine brighter than the rest... Gold!

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...

News over the weekend seems to have spooked investors this morning, particularly in the tech sector. And the effects are spilling out all across the market.

Are investors being a little overly dramatic here? 

The bet we're making is YES.

Today's trade is not in a tech stock, just a boring old bank that has been trending higher for over a year now.

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

1. New position in XLC.
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!

This morning is just a friendly reminder to turn off the TV.

There's nothing on there to help you. It's not their job to help you make better and more informed investing decisions.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. Their only job is to convince you that you need to come back and keep watching.

That's it. That's literally their only job.

Some people are too weak to overcome their tricks, and instead fall for the old trap of, "I need to watch so I can stay informed".

 implications, however, are NOT that you'll be more informed. In fact, you're actually going to be a lot more misinformed.

Again, their job is NOT to inform you, or even to help you. That's never been their job, not matter how much they pretend that it is.

So don't fall for the trap of traditional media. If they've proven anything over the years, it's that they cannot be trusted.

Turn it off. And put on some music instead.

I'll let you know when I'm on tv, and you can turn it on for a few minutes. Or better yet, I'll just send you the video replay.

But everything you need to know you'll see right here first. 

Now, with that in mind,...

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 obnoxious about our natural gas trade recently, and we still think it has tremendous upside from the current level.

That's why we outlined the coal industry and our favorite miner last week.

But that's not all. We're also stalking the agricultural inputs industry, which is levered to the price of natural gas, for a breakout.

Our Fertilizer Index is an equal-weight basket of 11 stocks from the agricultural inputs industry like Corteva $CTVA, Nutrien $NTR, and Mosaic $MOS.

The price fell to a new cycle low in December, but the bulls quickly stepped up and created...

Today's relatively short-term trade has an earnings catalyst, and I'm betting it will propel us to profits.

The stock has already had a stellar run over the past 52-weeks. Will the upcoming earnings mark the top? I doubt it.

Here's a one-year chart of a technology company that specializes in mobile app growth and monetization solutions -- Applovin Corp $APP:

As strong as this stock has been, it looks like it's setting up for another leg higher. And the upcoming February 12th earnings report just may be the catalyst the market needs to send this stock flying again. 

Of course, earnings can be a wild card, so it'll be important to define my risks.

Here's the Play:

I like buying an $APP February 400/450 Bull Call Spread for an approximately $11.50 debit. This means that I'll be long the Feb 400 calls and short an equal amount of the 450 calls. This debit I pay today is the most I can lose in a worst-case scenario:

I'm going to hold this trade, no matter what, through the February 12 earnings event.

On February 13th, my stop becomes $400. If $APP is below $400 per share, I'll close the spread for...

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...