Last night, JC jumped on the mic for the ASC Premium mid-month conference call — one of the two big ones he hosts each month.

He walked us through over 150 charts, diving into everything from sentiment and sector rotation to risk appetite. Classic top-down work, with plenty of actionable insights along the way.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Sentiment is still a mess. The headlines are loud, dramatic, and overwhelmingly bearish. 

Journalists dressed up as economists are out there warning that this won’t end well.

Just take a look at some of the recent The Economist covers.

We’ve seen this movie before. There’s always a reason to sell,...

The title for this post was too easy.

Today's trade is in a $29B ultra-processed packaged foods giant that has been struggling since 2023 and feels like its hanging on the precipice of a deeper fall.

Whether or not that comes to pass, this stock feels like a good place to put on a slightly bearish bet to give my bullish portfolio a bit of diversification in case the broader market stalls here.

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

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolling XLE to August options.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

If there’s one area of the market that still hasn’t woken up like it should, it’s small-caps.

Nobody wants them right now. The hate is real.

Bearish sentiment is building fast, and short interest in the Russell 2000 $IWM is at 18-month highs.

Investors are pressing their bets, leaning hard against these stocks. But when the crowd gets this aggressive, the unwind is rarely quiet.

Small-caps matter. They’re a real proxy for market breadth — covering everything from regional banks and biotechs to industrials and other under-the-radar names. And when they move, it usually means something bigger is brewing.

Look at the Russell 2000 vs. Russell 1000 ratio sitting right on long-term support.

If small-caps are about to enter a fresh period of outperformance, this would be a logical place for it to start.

Notice how every major bull run this century has seen small-caps leading — at least in the short term. 

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ricardo Sarraf @nullcharts

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...

Did you catch what happened with SRM Entertainment $SRM yesterday?

This little-known toy company just secured a $100 million investment from a private investor — and they’re using the funds to buy Tron $TRX, the cryptocurrency, effectively turning the company into a crypto treasury vehicle.

As part of the shift, they’re renaming the company to “Tron Inc.”, bringing on Tron founder Justin Sun as an advisor, and working with Dominari Securities, a brokerage firm reportedly linked to Eric Trump.

In other words, Tron is going public, using SRM as a backdoor listing, and positioning itself as a kind of “MicroStrategy 2.0”, but for TRX instead of Bitcoin.

And the market noticed.

SRM stock exploded over +530% on the day.

This is part of a growing trend:

• Struggling small-cap companies pivoting to crypto in a last-ditch attempt to revive shareholder value.
• Turning their corporate treasuries into speculative crypto bets.
• Tapping into the retail FOMO around digital assets.

Is this sustainable?

Almost certainly not.
 

...

We’ve been waiting patiently for a leadership handoff in the metals market. 

It’s happening now.

Platinum and Palladium, the long-forgotten cousins of the precious metals complex, are waking up.

Just look at the charts.

I was joking with Patrick earlier, and I told him I buy every ticker he texts me these days. 

“Buy first. Ask questions later.” 

But I was just alluding to the fact that it seems like every bullish chart pattern is working out here. 

I talk to my friends about what I’m seeing and trading throughout the day, and many of us have been on the speculative growth train. 

It’s insane how well these junky stocks are working. And it’s a longer list of them every day. 

I know almost for a fact that a good deal of these are probably zeros over the long run. That doesn’t matter. 

What matters is that they are working now. 

It’s the kind of market to take shots on the crazy stuff. And we have been doing it more and more because we keep being rewarded.  

It’s...

Today's trade is in a name that has a very high short interest and is starting to put the squeeze on shorts. 

And if this stock completes its climb back to all-time highs, there will be a lot of juice to squeeze out of these shorts.

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...

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

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolling ARKK to August options.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!