From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Goodbye, August!

That was a tough month, and we'll see what September brings.

We've seen a big two-day move for the indices, and we still have two days before the long weekend for $SPY to  hit 453 and 455.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using 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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market started the day in consolidation mode then kept trying to break out.

We can still see the push in $SPY to 453.

This is the video recording of the August 30, 2023, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by the CEO of Sirius XM Holdings Inc $SIRI, Jennifer C. Witz.

Witz revealed a purchase of SIRI shares of roughly $1 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

To all my Floridians out there, be safe.

The indices were up over 1% yesterday.

We'll see if we rest and pause or head straight to 453 on $SPY.

The big news dropped yesterday that Grayscale won their case vs the SEC apparently paving the way for a new Bitcoin ETF soon.

Whether any of this is true or not isn't really our concern.

I couldn't care less about Grayscale or any of their personal issues.

The "news" is not our problem. What we're really interested in what is actually happening.

But a 5-6% ripper in Bitcoin yesterday and a near 30% rally in Marathon Digital certainly gets my attention.

First, here is a longer-term look at the structural uptrends in Bitcoin and Ethereum as they both held support from former resistance levels at their prior cycle peaks.

Notice how the buyers...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a very big move for the indices today.

Once $SPY broke out of its resistance zone, this one and the others really jumped.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Ares Management Company.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of Frontier Communications Parent Inc $FYBR shares in the amount of $573,540.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is really stuck, and names aren't appealing to me at the moment.

We've drifted lower since early August, and now we have a slight bounce in the indices.

Now we need to see if it continues or we roll back over.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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, 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...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...