If you're living on this planet, credit is everything—it shapes economies and tells us whether we’re in a "risk-on" or "risk-off" environment. 

And there's no better indicator of investor sentiment than the bond market.

With over $140 trillion traded daily, bonds are the largest asset class in the world, spanning all around the globe, from retail investors to governments.

One way we use bonds for information is by analyzing credit spreads as a signal for stress in the market. 

Right now, credit spreads are not warning of elevated risk, they are doing just the opposite. Giving bulls the green light.

Credit spreads are tightening and hitting multi-year highs when comparing junk bonds to treasury bonds.

We’ve overlaid the HYG/IEI ratio with small caps to show how similar the two charts look.

Despite the new highs in HYG/IEI, the S...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then...

Ok, we're going to head abroad and as far away from election risk as we can.

In fact, we're to head to Sweden for today's trade. Is that far enough away?

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in XME.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Global markets sold off hard yesterday, dragging crypto lower.

Does that worry me?

Below is the 5th ASC Mastermind Course. In this course, I discuss sentiment and seasonality, and how we use it to further our analysis.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in XOP.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

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-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

And here’s how we arrived at it…

We removed laggards which are down 5% or more relative to the ACWI Ex. U.S. Index $ACWX over the trailing...

Why does it seem like every time I remind a group of people about the underperformance from Technology stocks, they're always surprised to hear it.

It's like they don't even know that Large-cap Tech stocks have been underperforming for most of the year, and Small-cap Tech has been underperforming for 18 months.

Is this not common knowledge?

Large-cap Tech was actually down in Q3. And then it started out Q4 with a flat September. 

Small-cap Tech is somehow down for all of 2024, despite the Small-cap Russell2000 Index being up double digits this year.

That's the exact definition of underperformance. 

Now, let's keep in mind what Technology even is...

The S&P500 Technology Index includes stocks like Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia as its largest components.

Google and Meta are NOT in Technology. They're both in the Communications index along with Netflix.

Large-cap Communications are actually the best performing sector so far in 2024. This group is very different than "Tech":

Communications are outperforming the S&P500, Nasdaq100 and even Utilities (which became cool this year). 

When...

As we inch closer to the election, the "change-of-narrative" plays still hold interest to me -- both as hedges to my overall bullish positioning, and as alpha generators.

Today's trade is in a "junky" solar name that has gotten beaten down with the rest of it's sector as investors are pricing in a Trump victory that would be perceived as bearish for the Solar Industry.

But what if a Trump victory results in an inverse "sell the news" type of event and the selling pressure gets lifted from this sector? Or, better yet, what if the pollsters are wrong (it's happened before!) and Harris comes out victorious? Wouldn't that result in an immediate narrative shift for this sector? And if that happens, junky stocks like today's trade could potentially offer a tremendous amount of alpha.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new trades today.
2. Adjustment to GLD position.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

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...