From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Risk assets are taking a hit.

The major equity indexes are seeing red. Crude oil is slipping below eighty bucks. And gold is failing at new all-time highs.

Perhaps the markets are navigating the summertime blues – a tune base and industrial metal investors have been humming for months.

Remember copper’s failed breakout in May:

Oof!

Dr. Copper is living up to the trading adage that from failed moves come fast moves in the opposite direction.

The futures continue to fall – down almost 8 percent this week. 

Meanwhile, track the 4.16 level for potential support:

That level coincides with a key retracement and former resistance area – a logical place for buyers to step in and defend price. 

On the other hand, momentum is drifting toward oversold conditions. If the 14-day RSI drops below 30, I imagine copper will reach...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Breadth has expanded in a big way since last week, with more and more stocks finally joining in on the bull market as big-cap tech leaders take a breather.

At the sector and industry group level, our list of indexes that are in uptrends continues to grow.

Some notable new members on this list include regional banks, small-caps, and various speculative growth funds.

After years of basing in accumulation patterns, these groups are just now completing primary trend reversals.

What does this mean?

In its simplest form, it means there are more ponds we can fish in for long opportunities. There are more stocks -- and groups of stocks -- that are in uptrends.

It’s just more options for us.

One of the groups that has broken out with authority recently is the biotechs.

Regardless of what index you're looking at, the path of least resistance is now higher for this health care subsector.

We’ve identified some of the strongest biotech stocks with asymmetric risk/reward setups and clear levels to trade against.

We think these are the best vehicles to bet...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

We've also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It's got all the big names and more–but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let's dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here's this week's list:

...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Risk assets are taking a hit.

The major equity indexes are seeing red. Crude oil is slipping below eighty bucks. And Gold is failing at new all-time highs.

Perhaps the markets are navigating the summertime blues – a tune base and industrial metal investors have been humming for months.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As most of you know, we use 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 their journey to becoming the market...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The stock market is in the middle of one of its fiercest multi-day rallies in recent history.

Since last week, there has been a notable expansion in breadth, with areas like small caps, regional banks, biotechs, and speculative growth joining the bull market party.

Long story short, investors are beginning to move out on the risk spectrum and embrace some of the riskiest stocks the market has to offer.

Another way to see this offensive positioning is by analyzing the performance of the stocks that investors are betting against the most.

Names with sky-high short interests continue to work in this environment.

As such, it's time to run it back with another Freshly Squeezed report.

Here's how we do things...

We find the most heavily shorted stocks in the market. We wait for momentum to come into these names. And then we ride them higher as the bears get squeezed.

We got new short data last week, so let's dive in and talk about it.

Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with the most aggressive short positions.

When a stock...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The bull market is back! 

The major indexes are hitting new all-time highs, and so is gold. 

Small-caps are ripping. Crypto is ripping. And the most heavily shorted names on the street are squeezing higher.

I’d expect the US dollar to break down as stock market bulls rush to put their greenbacks to work. 

Instead, the US Dollar Index $DXY is holding steady. Dollar-yen is refusing to roll over.

And risk-on commodity currencies – the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand dollars – are failing to trigger buy signals.

Stock market bulls don’t seem to care about the lack of risk-on signals from global currencies. 

As long as that’s the case...

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.

Nowadays, 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...

This is the video recording of the July 2024 Mid-month Conference Call.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals might be the most straightforward trade on the sheets right now.

Gold is 10 bucks away from a new all-time high. Silver and platinum are holding above critical breakout levels. And mining stocks are ripping.

Close your eyes and take a swing. You’re bound to hit a winner.

But your odds of success (and potential payout) improve if you forego shiny rocks in favor of buying gold and silver mining stocks.

Check out the Gold Miners $GDX breaking out relative to the Physical Gold Trust ETF $GLD:

GDX outperforming GLD speaks to risk-seeking behavior – a bullish environment for mining stocks and physical metals.

No wonder Alamos Gold $AGI, Eldorado Gold $EGO, and Kinross Gold $KGC are posting fresh multi-year highs. The most resilient trends outperform their alternatives – just like the Gold Miners ETF in the above chart. 

Meanwhile, the laggards refuse to break down. Even Newfound Gold $NFGC – fresh off all-time lows – has rallied more than...

Precious metals might be the most straightforward trade on the sheets right now.

Gold is ten bucks away from a new all-time high. Silver and platinum are holding above critical breakout levels. And mining stocks are ripping.

Close your eyes and take a swing. You’re bound to hit a winner.

But your odds of success (and potential payout) improve if you forego shiny rocks in favor of buying gold and silver mining stocks.

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.