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

Gold is up for the sixth day in a row – and it looks like this week’s breakout might be the real deal.

If it is — and gold continues to rip — it’s only a matter of time before copper breaks out too.

Check out the overlay chart of gold and copper futures:

Where gold goes, copper follows. Or perhaps they simply enjoy similar paths.

The rhyme or reason makes no difference. During a commodity bull run, precious and industrial metals will enter a broad markup phase. Gold will not take off on a rip-roaring rally without copper by its side.

I placed a question mark above copper’s former resistance level, marked by the 2011 and 2022 highs. To be clear, the annotation poses the question of when — not if – copper will resolve higher.

But before Dr. Copper can break the psychological...

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 sort the remaining names by their proximity to new 52-week highs.

This leaves...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

A risk-on revival has captivated the markets.

Investors are rising to their feet…

They’re buying stocks. They’re buying crypto. They’re buying gold.

Hell, they’re even buying high-yield Emerging Market bonds!

Check out the Emerging Market High Yield Bond ETF $EMHY breaking to a new multi-year high:

I throw this EMHY breakout into the same camp as the Biotech ETF $XBI blast off — risk-on.

It’s downright impossible to hold a bearish outlook while investors dance with the riskiest bonds on offer.

If you actively trade bond ETFs, you gotta be long EMHY above 37. For me, the EMHY breakout isn’t a trading event. 

Instead, it’s all about the behavior behind...

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

Stocks only go up.

Bitcoin is screaming its way back to the former all-time highs. Crude is printing multi-month highs. Even gold is breaking out to new all-time highs after going nowhere for years.

We’re entering the Davey Day Trader part of the cycle — green hammer and all.

Everything is trending higher. Everything except the dollar, that is…

The US Dollar Index $DXY is trading smack dab in the middle of last year’s October-to-December decline:

DXY rebounded to start the year only to find resistance at a critical retracement level.

It’s your standard trendless mess offering little insight into the dollar's next move.

While the ...

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.

With our Short Report scan, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

We publish this...

From the Desk of Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

In today's post, we're talking about a group of stocks that have emerged as the 'Generals' of the current bull market.

You are thinking, “it must be tech.”

It’s not.

Industrials have been just as strong as tech stocks but with far better internals. No other sector has experienced the kind of broad participation we’re seeing from industrials. These are the real market leaders.

Historically, the Industrial sector is the one with the highest correlation to the overall market. So, the strength of these stocks is also sending us very bullish information about the health of this bull market. 

This is great news, but today’s note is about looking under the hood and finding the best opportunities in the various industrial subgroups.

As one of the most diverse sectors, investors have plenty of options in the world of industrials. We did the work and dug into this space to find out what the strongest areas are and where we want to put our money.

Let’s get into it.

Here’s the Large-Cap Industrial Sector $XLI breaking out of a multi-year base:

...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended March 1, 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 options...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

You can’t keep the gold bugs down.

They’re a hearty bunch full of true grit, choosing to focus on the silver lining while persevering through countless downturns.

Gold, on the other hand, has been an easy target…

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

US Treasuries are taking a back seat to risk assets.

Bond market volatility is declining. Credit spreads are tightening. And Emerging Market high-yield bonds ($EMHY) are breaking out. 

Meanwhile, stocks are posting new all-time highs.

So, how high will interest rates climb over the near term?

My gut tells me not far — at least not in the coming weeks or months…

Check out the US benchmark rate finding resistance at approximately 4.33:

Last month’s high marks a logical ceiling for the US benchmark rate. 

Those former highs coincide with a key retracement level based on the run-up into the October 2023 peak. Plus, the 10-year yield paused at the same level for almost a month during last year's rally. That’s not a coincidence.

If the US 10-year breaks above 4.33, volatility will hit...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

What happened to those everyday commodity contracts the average investor follows?

I’m talking about crude oil, gold, and copper.

These days, it’s all about cattle futures, orange juice, or cocoa hitting an all-time high. 

I’m sure everyone down at the NYMEX or the folks over at the CBOT in Chicago are having a ball. But what about the stock traders trying to get a piece of the action?

Sure, the energy trade is starting to work again. But gold has been a range-bound mess since the summer of 2020. And gold mining stocks have been an absolute dumpster fire.

It just doesn’t make sense amid a commodity bull run…

No, the absence of gold and copper...