Here is a list of trade ideas organized by date, ticker symbol and directional bias. Please make sure you have clicked on the link and read the details surrounding the trade before acting upon any of them. Also, make sure you have checked with your financial advisor and tax accountants to make sure you are suitable to be executing what is discussed on this website. The risk management procedures and targets are detailed for each idea. Please read and review the terms and conditions page before making any trades of your own.
Yesterday, we wrote a post about scanning for new lows, putting our own spin on a strategy called "Wall Street's only free lunch."
I was joking with JC that it felt a bit uncomfortable to search through such a weak list of stocks. After all, we’re used to scanning for strength.
But the scan was a fun exercise, and we found some weakness we want to be buying in secular leaders.
The universe wasn’t exactly full of strong stocks, as we were scanning for new 52-week lows. But that’s OK; we have plenty others for that.
In this post, we’re going to walk through another scan we did internally this week. Unlike the "free lunch," this one is more in line with our top-down approach of finding the strongest stocks in the strongest groups.
While we're still scanning for new lows, we’re doing so on a much shorter time frame, and we're adding additional filters to ensure all the stocks on our list are leaders.
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 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 which you can check out here.
The Hall of Famers is simple.
We take our list of 100 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.
The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.
The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.
Many of you are already familiar with this popular market adage as it is a commonly used quip in our industry.
All it really means is that you can't get something for nothing from the market.
Have you ever bought a high-yielding stock for the dividend and rode it into a big drawdown just for them to announce they're cutting the payout?
Did you listen to a friend about a biotech stock that was supposed to rip higher on positive FDA results... but it actually gapped lower?
How about following the analyst community into a stock that was a consensus buy... until it turned out not to be?
In all of these scenarios, the investor is simply looking for a free lunch. And 9 times out of 10, these situations don't work out. There are no easy investments or get-rich-quick tricks on wall street. At least not sustainable ones. You have to put in the work.
One rule that I live by for my own investing is this: "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."
Right now it's hard to ignore how the bond market is impacting certain stocks, and which ones of those are already ahead of the game.
You see in December, we've seen credit spreads narrowing to levels not seen since the pandemic crash in 2020. The Yield curve has been steepening as well. And rates in general, particularly the 10yr and 30yr held their key levels and started moving higher.
To me, all of this screams higher for bank stocks. But it's not a one size fits all scenario. There are leaders.
And I can't help but point out Customers Bancorp. This $2B Regional Bank stock has continued to make new all-time highs, despite the industry under pressure over the past couple of months.
We’re buying an $MPC Feb/Apr 70 Call Calendar Spread for around a $1.10 debit. This means we’ll be short the February 70 calls and long an equal amount of April 70 calls for a net debit
Check out our short video with the thought process behind these trades:
When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as a market of stocks.
Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.
We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions… but there are always stocks that are going up.
The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too.
We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club. We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics.
The point is that we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports. Now, we’re also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
With the exception of US large-caps, the market remains range-bound for most risk assets. At the same time, most defensive assets are failing to catch any meaningful bid.
Gold is still chopping around in the middle of its year-to-date range. Bonds continue to trend sideways or lower. The Japanese yen recently hit its lowest level since 2017.
And while the defensive sectors recently made multi-month highs versus the broader market, they're still trading near 20-year lows on a relative basis.
These are the kinds of assets we expect to catch a bid in an environment where investors are fleeing for safety and positioning defensively. But we’re just not seeing that.
At the same time, we haven’t seen many definitive signals supporting a more risk-on tone… until now!
While our risk-appetite ratios remain a mixed bag and most are simply range-bound, we just got a meaningful upside resolution in the High Yield versus Treasuries ratio.
