From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos
The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Julie J. Durr, the co-trustee of the Ann S. Gerdin Revocable Trust, which owns 10 percent of Heartland Express $HTLD.
Durr reported the acquisition of 182,268 HTLD shares, equivalent to $2,501,143.
Whenever we want to gauge animal spirits in the precious metals space, we resort to our trusty intermarket ratios.
Two weeks ago in our Gold report, we covered the notable bounce we were witnessing in the Silver/Gold ratio, pointing to brewing risk appetite within this space. And this week, we outlined a bullish trade in the iShares Silver ETF off the back of this recent momentum.
But when we take this relationship one step further, we see a similar situation in the relationship between Silver and Gold mining stocks.
Credit spreads have tightened a good deal since October.
I can't help but think this is just more classic bull market behavior.
As the major US equity indices have been rallying into year end, we've seen confirmation out of a number of credit ratios we track to gauge risk appetite within fixed income markets. Specifically, the the iShares High Yield Corporate Bond ETF $HYG is trading at 52-week highs relative to the iShares 3-7yr Treasury Bond ETF $IEI.
This ratio ultimately gives us an inverted chart of credit spreads. Check it out:
Notice how both the S&P 500 and the HYG/IEI ratio are pressing back through their summer highs.
It's hard to have a bull market in equities if the bond market is positioning defensively. Think about it; the players in the market with the deepest pockets require an incredible amount of liquidity.
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.
The bull market continues to last longer than most people have expected.
Some investors don't even realized that stocks have been in a bull market. They haven't bothered to look.
So while the glorified gossip columns are telling you that only 7 stocks are going up, we keep seeing broadening participation in stocks all over the world.
It's the exact opposite of weak breadth.
Look at the German DAX, for example, going out this week at a new all-time high:
The speculative juices are returning to the cryptocurrency space, and the bulls are starting to reemerge from the shadows as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and many of the smaller (MOAR!) speculative names are starting some eye-popping gains.
As equities traders, we don't have a proper spot ETF to play anything in the crypto space, but the closest thing we have is Microstrategy $MSTR.
So we're going to use this vehicle to make a speculative bet on a potential upside-down waterfall move in Bitcoin.
We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.
However, when it comes to our latest project, it couldn't be any simpler!
With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.
Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.
This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.
There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.