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From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

Something we've been working on internally is using various bottoms-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...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Dollar bulls, be warned!

The US Dollar Index $DXY is sliding toward the lower bounds of a multi-month range. 

Yes, it’s still a sideways mess. And it will remain a mess as long as its former support level holds.

But based on the most recent data, my money is on a downside resolution for King Dollar.

Especially when I consider last week’s breakout in Canadian dollar futures…

Besides the DXY trading below 101, I’ve monitored two key data points for confirmation of continued dollar weakness:

• the euro trading above 1.08, as it constitutes over 57% of the DXY (though recently it’s challenged a 1.10 handle); and
• commodity currencies, including the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand dollars, reclaiming their respective July pivot lows.

It’s difficult to imagine the DXY ripping higher if its dominant component is completing a bearish-to-bullish reversal. Which the euro is.

Check.

This is the video recording of the June 2023 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I left gold bugs an urgent message last week.

“This mess could turn downright ugly for the entire precious metals space if buyers don’t step in and support higher prices in palladium – and fast.”

I am many things, but “alarmist” isn't one of them. I simply find it hard to believe gold will post new all-time highs while palladium falls to fresh five-year lows.

Call me crazy, but those two puzzle pieces don’t seem to fit.

Perhaps we’ll never know for sure, as buyers showed up right on cue, driving palladium higher ahead of the three-day weekend. 

Last week’s strength bodes well for all metals, industrial and precious. So I’ll reiterate critical levels to trade against in palladium.

But I also want to share a strong correlation between this multifaceted metal and a market I would never have guessed…

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...

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.

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.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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,...

A healthy rotation is underway across equity markets.

Leadership has swung toward cyclical value-oriented names over the trailing two weeks. Small-cap Energy, Materials, and Financials are outpacing the year-to-date top performers (Large-cap Tech). It’s a clear expansion in participation and a hallmark characteristic of any bull market.

But if cyclical stocks have a chance at participating over the long haul, we want to witness similar strength from corresponding commodity markets.

And we are…

Check out rebar futures posting a potential failed breakdown: 

The bounce in rebar fits with the strength in small-caps and Emerging Market equities. If industrial metals such as rebar start catching higher, procyclical commodities and their related stocks likely follow suit…

What about Dr. Copper?

Copper...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Forget about Wednesday’s FOMC decision.

Yes, investors continue to react, unpacking Jerome Powell’s words while looking ahead to next month’s meeting. It’s a never-ending cycle proffered by unrelenting data.

But it’s this constant flux that makes the market the most engaging puzzle in the world (aside from life, of course).

Yet one piece of the puzzle renders the chaos manageable… 

The closing price.

That’s the main reason I choose to devote the majority of my energy to price charts. The closing price is seldom revised, acting as an anchor during turbulent conditions. 

Call me old school, but price is never wrong.

With that in mind, let’s take a fresh look at a key intermarket ratio many (including me) have labeled “broken”...

I'm talking about regional banks versus REITs.

This ratio belongs to a long list of intermarket relationships that haven’t...

These are the registration details for our LIVE Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Tuesday June 20th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night: