From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

Bonds are off to their worst start in the past 40 years, possibly ever! 

It’s not even close. 

As we near the end of Q2, the US Treasury Bond ETF $TLT is down almost 22% year to date. And that’s after its recent bounce higher.

There's been nowhere to hide, as these traditional safe-haven assets have been an absolute dumpster fire along with stocks.

But we’re starting to see some of those flames extinguished.

Some of the worst-performing stocks tipped the bond market’s hand ahead of the recent lows. That’s right: Those Big Tech names and Chinese internet stocks stopped going down months ago and now bonds are following higher.

Believe it or not, bonds and high-duration equities have a lot in common. The Growth $IWF versus Value $IWD ratio really tells the story.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s an overlay chart of the TLT and the IWF/IWD ratio:

While bonds have sold off throughout the year, growth stocks have suffered a similar fate...

Monday night we held our June Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.

Let’s get right into it!

The largest insider buy on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Michael Gladstone, independent director at Day One Biopharmaceuticals $DAWN.

Gladstone disclosed the purchase of approximately $11.5 million worth of shares in the mid-cap biotech company.

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 during...

This is the video recording of our June 22, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

SkyKnight Capital Fund disclosed the purchase of approximately $1.6 million worth of shares in the home medical equipment company AdaptHealth Corp $AHCO, as it continues to build a position in the stock.

The fund now owns 8,906,070 shares, which represents a roughly 6.15% ownership stake in the medical devices company.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

Whatever we’re looking for, the market has it.

If we’re searching for large topping patterns and strong downtrends, there’s plenty to go around, especially in the bond and stock markets right now.

Some people love taking the short side, feeding on the doom and gloom narratives accompanying the selling pressure.

But if that’s not your cup of tea, plenty of markets are trending higher. If you’re more interested in assets making new highs and like buying high and selling higher, look no further than the currency market.

When it comes to forex crosses these days, it’s simple.

All we have to do is put the US dollar in the numerator or place the Japanese yen in the denominator, and we get big bases that have either broken out or are on the verge of breaking out.

It’s that easy.

We’ve highlighted the yen in recent posts, so today we’ll switch gears and focus on a couple USD crosses from northern Europe.

Let’s dive in!

Here’s the US dollar/Swedish krona cross:...

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...

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing from Allied Physicians of California.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $9.2 million in Apollo Medical Holdings $AMEH. It now owns about 11 million shares for a total ownership interest of 19%.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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 the stock is about to move in their...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

Structural Damage For Smalls

Equities all around the world are having a brutal start to the summer as selling pressure spreads across the board. All of the US major averages are completing tops and registering new closing lows. 

The Small Cap Russell 2000 Index has been the weakest as IWM is currently testing a critical support zone at its 2018 and 2020 highs. We will be watching closely in the coming days to see how prices react to this area of former resistance turned support.

Bulls want to see this level hold. However, if price violates these former highs, we have to anticipate another leg lower and increased selling pressure for stocks more broadly. Seeing more and more risk assets fall back below their 2018 and 2020 highs is a big feather in the hat for bears. The S&P 500 is still about 7% above its 2020 highs of 3400.

...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe continued lower again as 89% of our list closed in the red with a median return of -4.69%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the winner, closing with a 12.18% gain.
• The biggest loser was Dow Jones Utilities $DJU, with a weekly loss of -9.46%.
• There was a 7% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 4%.
• 9% of our macro list made fresh 4-...