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...

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...

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...

The team and I have been digging through our currency charts today, trying to figure out if we should trust these new lows in the Dollar Index.

And the truth is, there is plenty we could say about dollars right now, but I don’t think it would help.

The Dollar Index is going to go in the opposite direction of these bull flags in EUR and GBP.

It’s really that simple. 

And as far as other currencies go, I think we can expect them to follow the majors. Some of them are already breaking out. 

Remember, the major developed currencies started trending well against the dollar first, and then emerging currencies gradually followed. 

I expect that intermarket cadence will continue during the next wave of dollar weakness.

And it looks like it already is. Here’s the Euro and Pound resolving their coils higher against USD:

Both of these currencies ramped to fresh multi-year highs in April and have been consolidating in continuation patterns ever since.

This action reminds me of some of the ...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

In this scan, we look to identify 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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

Every major commodity boom of the last 25 years has followed the same blueprint:

🔺 CRB Index starts curling higher
🔺 Yield curve inverts… then steepens
🔺 And commodities don’t just rally—they detonate.

Look at the chart. 

2001 → Inversion → Steepening → Oil +300%
2006 → Same setup → Same outcome
2020 → Rinse and repeat

And now?

It’s happening again.

The CRB is coiling just beneath multi-year resistance. The kind of tight, coiled spring that doesn’t let go gently. Momentum is building. The yield curve—the most reliable forward indicator we’ve got—is turning up from historic depths.

This isn’t some lagging inflation print. This isn’t a Fed narrative. This is price. And price is truth.

This is a setup that only comes around a few times in a generation. Most investors sleep through it. They wait for confirmation. They miss it.

But not you.

Hemingway once said bankruptcy happens two ways: gradually, then suddenly. Commodity cycles are the same. They creep. They churn. Then they rip.

...

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.

Grain markets are showing signs of life.

After a brutal multi-year collapse, many major agricultural contracts are starting to perk up. 

The short-term and intermediate-term trends are beginning to point higher. 

Momentum is entering a new bullish regime. 

And participation is expanding.

We’ve already outlined bullish setups in the futures for Corn, Soybeans, and Soybean Oil. 

These contracts have been carving out bottoms, and they're starting to resolve higher from well-defined bases. 

Now, we're seeing more of the same.

The short-term strength is hard to ignore.

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...