It's a new year and the market is looking forward.
It doesn't matter what happened last year, as far as our decisions are concerned. But let's not forget that humans are irrational, and they will certainly let the past year or two impact their decision making.
They can't help themselves. So it's up to us as traders and investors to extract those dollars for our own selfish reasons.
We're here to make money. Period. Taking advantage of human flaws is a great way to do that, as I've been showing you here every day for over a decade.
Yesterday we discussed the irrational behavior we're seeing from investors in the middle of a bull market. They're running scared, just as market breadth is improving to the upside, across multiple timeframes.
The Retail Investors are scared to death. And that's a good thing.
We don't want individual investors too optimistic. That's when stocks sell off. It's when they're pessimistic and worried that you see the best forward returns.
Go back and see for yourself. It's all public information. These are the people we want to fade. This is the "Dumb" money, so to speak.
Dig this. The first sentiment data for the year just came out from the American Association of Individual Investors with the fewest number of bulls since April of last year.
In the middle of the bull market, they're crazy scared.
Good.
Now keep in mind, this is specifically what they're saying.
But what are they doing?
Well, the Put/Call Ratio just hit new 4-month highs. This means investors are buying insurance (Put options) at a much faster rate than they're betting on higher stock prices (Call options).
That's also evidence that they're scared. Why else would you be buying insurance at such a fast rate?
Now, what else are they doing?
Active Investment Managers (NAAIM) have on the least amount of long exposure since...
Today's trade is in a stock who's price action is mimicking what their products delivers for its customers -- it's going vertical! How's that for kizmet?
That trade might classify as a "hard trade," but I'll be doing what I can to increase the odds of success in my favor.
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.