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.
Crude oil is relinquishing its leadership role. Gold and silver are catching a bid. And copper is digging in at former support.
But it’s not only base and precious metals bouncing off critical levels…
Check out our Equal-weight Commodity Index refusing to roll over:
Our commodity index, comprised of an equally weighted basket of 33 commodities, is finding support at a shelf of former highs. This is the principle of polarity at its finest – former resistance turning into support.
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.
The market barely reacted Wednesday afternoon following Powell’s remarks, cooking up a big, fat nothing burger for investors.
Market participants took the decision to leave rates untouched in stride. After all, the pause in the hiking cycle was the expected outcome. Since investors already pegged the Fed, the valuable information hung on Powell’s words or forward guidance.
Yet judging by today’s performance, it appears the market just needed a little time to marinate.
Yesterday’s failed reaction has given way to a delayed response as long-duration bonds scream higher.
But before we get ahead of ourselves and rush out to buy the bond market bottom, let’s check the charts…
But where can we define the next logical upside objectives?
Let’s dive in…
Before tackling our targets for the dollar-yen pair, check out the Japanese 10-year yield:
The BoJ’s yield curve control policy has, in large part, capped the USD/JPY rate as traders and policymakers play a game of chicken. Traders drive the dollar-yen pair higher, challenging the Japanese central bank's hold on interest rates.
Meanwhile, the BoJ steps in with policy decisions supportive of the yen.
Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended October 27, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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 seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.
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.