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.
This is definitely a "hard" trade. Hard because it's already had a tremendous run this month. Hard because it's in a name that people often don't associate with big bull runs, in a sector that definitely isn't sexy.
And maybe we're early, positioning just about when it's about to take a pause or retrace to digest recent gains. Maybe.
The only way to find out is to get involved.
The hard trades pay precisely because they are hard.
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.
Powell supposedly stated the obvious or blurted out what was on everyone’s mind. I don’t know. I haven’t watched the video or reviewed yesterday’s treasury auction.
And I won’t.
I’m more interested in the “what,” not the “why,” as the former has proven far more valuable for navigating markets.
Crypto is showing signs of a resurgence. With Bitcoin trading north of $35,000 this week, many of the old bulls are coming out of the woodwork calling for the next crypto run.
Well, if the next run is soon at hand, today's trade is in a company that is certainly positioned to benefit from any uptick in sh*t coin trading volumes.
For the longest time, investors in the United States have been rewarded for their home country bias and their overexposure to large-caps and growth stocks.
The secular trend of underperformance from international equities relative to the United States commenced over 15 years ago. Many investors have simply never seen stocks outside the US outperform over any material timeframe.
It's not a matter of impossibility; rather, our recency bias tends to mistake unfamiliarity for the extraordinary.
A regime of sustained value outperformance isn't isolated to the realm of fantasy. It was only last year that holding growth over value was nothing short of opportunity cost, while international equities outpaced their US counterparts through Q4 and into the new year.
Recently, Meb Faber joined us on the morning show, where he discussed the topic of international investing. He argued that this is the best time in history to make the value trade, both domestically and internationally.
