Stock markets all over the world are parading to fresh highs. From Europe to Asia, the world’s major benchmarks sit at – or within a stone’s throw of – all-time or cycle highs.
Stateside, the Nasdaq 100 printed a new all-time high, and the S&P 500 followed a few days after.
Leadership groups are breaking out in unison. Down the risk curve, speculative growth is screaming and semis are back in the driver’s seat.
One bull flag after another keeps resolving higher.
And most importantly for today's note— the laggards keep catching up to the leaders.
But there’s one group that just hasn't shown up yet… and quite frankly, the bull market can’t rage on without them. I’m talking about a group of stocks SO important, they literally have to join the party. Otherwise, it throws a wrench in the entire bullish thesis.
In this scan, we look to identify 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 behemoths they are today.
When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...
You have probably heard me talk about the Three B’s before.
It stands for banks, biotechs, and builders, and is a fun and convenient acronym I use when discussing the most interest rate-sensitive stocks.
These groups could not be more different, but they share a key similarity in the sense that they all move in synchrony with the bond market.
Biotechs are some of the longest-duration equities, so lower rates boost their valuations. It also allows these chronic cash-burners to access capital cheaply.
Builders sell houses, and lower rates are the key demand driver, so that one is obvious.
And banks are new to the lower rates list.
We used to say banks want higher rates, or a higher spread—it’s how they make money. However, that changed recently as asset-liability matching issues arose from lending operations during the last rate-...
I had a thought this morning while considering a few trades:
Maybe part of why I still struggle at trading sometimes is because there’s a part of me that really, really wants to follow an instruction manual to be successful.
In other areas of my life, that mindset serves me well.
I don’t know how to cook—but give me step-by-step directions, and I thrive. When we used to get HelloFresh boxes delivered, I crushed those meals. I followed the instructions, made something delicious and useful for my family, and felt like a total champ.
Following the instructions = success. I like that. I crave that.
But trading isn’t like that.
I can lay out a well-thought-out plan—how to select the trade, how to size it, how to manage it—and still lose money.
The market doesn’t care that I followed the recipe.
There’s no gold star just for executing cleanly.
And yeah, I know a successful outcome in trading is supposed to mean I followed my plan with discipline. I know.
But that doesn’t make a loss feel any better. Which leads to the uncomfortable question I’ve been sitting with:
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, 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...