From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to our latest project, it couldn't be any simpler!

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 stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

The bottom line is it is a bull market. We want as many vehicles and options...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Interest rates are climbing worldwide. The US dollar is dominating the pack.

And commodities are kicking off the next leg of a bull run that began in 2019.

The primary trends that opened the decade are showing no signs of reversing. As long as they remain intact, we must lean into them.

I can’t think of a stronger trend to ride than the dollar-yen…

The USD/JPY pair is posting its highest level since June 1990:

Now that’s a big base breakout.

Fresh 33-year highs ignite the imagination. But, from a tactical perspective, I’m more concerned with the completion of a 17-month cup-and-handle.

Here’s a closer look:

I outlined our breakout and target levels in ...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As most of you know, we use various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying 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...

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.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, 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 highs in order to...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

New all-time highs have a funny way of shifting perspectives.

Not too long ago, many considered gold a “dumpster fire,” a “hot mess,” or an “opportunity cost.”

All were fair assessments. 

Everything changed last month when gold rocketed to its highest recorded level.

Yet, for some reason, investors weren’t buying into its strength.

But a 12% gain over the past five weeks has quickly turned reluctant investors into ravenous speculators.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Commodities are hot.

Even the most ardent tech investors can’t avert their gaze from Gold’s eye-catching new highs. 

If you find yourself unprepared, don’t be alarmed. We have a plan…

Buy base breakouts.

Check out coffee futures ripping above a shelf of former highs:

We often joke that catching base breakouts like this gets us out of bed in the morning. (It’s the best part of waking up.)   

The trade setup outlined at the beginning of the year still stands, though the contacts have changed. (May now represents the most actively traded month and our contract of choice. However, it will likely roll to July next week.)

I like coffee futures long above 197 with an initial target of 260. But it wouldn’t surprise me if coffee experiences a parabolic advance...

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 Airbnb and Uber.

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 sort the remaining names by...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Can we all give the rate cut debate a break?

Everyone is obsessing over the Fed’s rate cut plans. Meanwhile, interest rates are climbing to their highest level since early December.

Instead of following Fed gossip and what-ifs, focus on what is: Yields continue to creep higher as inflationary assets rip.

Check out our Global Benchmark Rate Composite, an equal-weight basket of Developed Market 10-year yields (Germany, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, and the US):

Our global composite is holding well above the lower bounds of a yearlong range, catching toward the underside of a flat 200-day moving average. 

Yields on sovereign debt show no signs of an imminent collapse.

Could rates roll over in the coming quarters? Absolutely! 

But the data fails to support a falling interest rate thesis. In fact, the charts suggest quite the opposite…

...

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...

We also highlight lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We publish this...

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 March 29, 2024. 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 are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

People are asking me if gold's breakout is the real deal.

All I can do is smile, state my bullish outlook, and draw a line in the sand.

Of course, I can’t resist adding an obnoxious upside target or two (the higher, the better).

Hopefully, it sounds simple. That’s the goal! It never pays to overcomplicate price action…. 

If you’re still wondering whether precious metals are a viable investment despite gold’s new all-time highs, let’s identify the underlying trend…

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 Mercado Libre 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:

...