From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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.

The bottom line is it is a bull market. We want as many vehicles and options...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Last month’s bond rally has legs.

Long-duration bonds have gone from printing multi-month highs to reclaiming their March pivot lows in just a few weeks.

So, let’s revisit our recent swing trades as they continue to run...

Thirty-year T-bond futures sliced through our initial target of 122:

Luckily, a completed bull flag provides a precise level to define our risk.

We can take another long position in T-bond futures, targeting 134, but only if it holds above 124’09.

Here's a look through the equities market…

The long-duration bond ETF $TLT is on the verge of reclaiming a critical shelf of former lows:

Let’s call our line in the sand 100. 

A decisive break above that psychological level likely sends price to that hundred-dollar roll of 110. That’s our target.

If...

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. No new position today.
2. Defensive adjustment in XRT.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The only transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by James F. Lynch, director  of Globalstar Inc $GSAT.

Lynch reported a purchase of GSAT shares with a total value of $1,264,175.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using 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...

It was remarked during our Analyst meeting this morning that "bullish Wells Fargo" is a phrase that hasn't been uttered within our digital walls in a long, long time.

But we're looking to get more exposure to the banking sector, and $WFC is consolidating nicely after a fresh breakout last week. With all-time highs within bull market distance, we feel like we can get aggressive with this name for a run.

Implied volatility in $WFC call options is pretty tame here, so that affords us the luxury of going out six months to play the June options which will give us plenty of time to see if $WFC has the stuff.

Here's a chart of $WFC to set the stage:

In today's Daily Digest, we'll review:

1. No new position today.
2. Defensive adjustment in ITB.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.

Let's dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The only transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Tom Kelleher, co-CEO of B. Riley Financial $RILY.

Kelleher reported a purchase of $404,392.

This is the 14th Form 4 filed for RILY this year.

The old saying from our friend Jeff Hirsch goes, "Buy in October and Get yourself Sober".

Did you listen?

And it's not so much about literally buying blindly in October, and more about the fact that stocks tend to end their seasonal corrections around that time, before going on to rally into the end of the year.

And that's exactly what we've seen.

Here is the 4-year seasonal cycle, which of course, suggested strength in equities since mid-term elections last year. And we certainly saw it.

Then the ...

It's stupidly easy to get swept away in narratives.

From the constant buzz about ETFs to the rise of random meme coins and the infamous halvening, it's hard to escape the storytelling.

It's amusing how people confidently share fundamental narratives during bullish markets, only to resort to drawing lines when sellers enter the scene.

Understanding why a market is trending is normal, but is it really helpful?

Not so much.

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.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

If it wasn't at the very top of the list, the Japanese yen was certainly among the best shorts of 2022.

But the times they are a-changin’.

King Dollar has ducked down a dark alley.

And it doesn't take a weatherman to tell us to buy the yen.

Here are Japanese yen futures carving out a year-long base following fresh 30-year lows:

I like buying strength on a breakout of this bottoming formation. But the yen has quite a way to travel before completing this possible double bottom. 

I don’t want to miss those potential gains, so let’s get tactical by taking a closer look… 

Check out the daily chart with a Fibonacci retracement framing the 2023 decline:

I’m long Japanese yen futures against 0.7075 (the 38....