With today's early rally and VIX on its way back down the recent mountain, now feels like the right time to capture some options premium in a wide Iron Condor in the QQQs.

I'm not calling that the bottom is in, but I'm open to it. Either way, it's unlikely we V-Bottom out of this morass, which is why betting on a wide, sloppy, sideways range feels right to me.

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

1. New position in XLB.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. Exited XLB and EEM at profit targets.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

Nowadays, to make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new...

I hope you're having a nice weekend.

Before I head out for the day I wanted to share a few thoughts about the market and what I'm seeing out there.

This week I laid out all my thoughts and favorite trades during our LIVE Conference Call. So today's note is about a few other things I didn't talk about on the call. 

The first one is this big 2100 level in Ethereum. Remember that despite all the underperformance from this one, ETH still carries a $240 Billion market-cap and is still the 2nd largest token on the planet.

If we're back above last year's lows, I would really start to get interested in this one. Look for the Bitcoin dominance to come off if Ethereum starts to outperform again. ETH can really help the Alts...

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

We don't have bull markets without Financials. It's just how the market works, both in the United States and Internationally. 

European Banks keep ripping. Japanese Banks keep ripping.

And you're seeing it in the United States as well. Berkshire Hathaway is the largest component of the S&P Financials Index, and BRKA just went out at new all-time highs again this week.

Here are the exchanges, still dominating as well. Both the CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange are hitting new all-time highs:

If this is your first bull market, I would encourage you to go back and study former bull markets throughout history. 

You'll notice similar behavior from Financials.

It's when things are making a turn for the bad that Financials really struggle.

We're currently seeing the opposite.

By my work, it's really the more "Value" oriented areas of the market that keep dominating returns, while the "Growth" areas have corrected.

Here is a list of the very best of the biggest companies in America. Notice all the Financials, Industrials, Healthcare and Energy.

This list is sorted by relative strength and the "...

It's happening.

Are you paying attention?

The best is when you're already moving on a position, and then new extremes in sentiment confirm the opportunity that you had already identified.

This is the setup currently in place for shares of Tesla stock.

Last week I told you how I had 2 separate experiences with normies who were telling me how much they hated Elon Musk. This was on an unsolicited basis. I didn't even ask.

See: The Libs Hate Elon & Tesla

It happened twice. In the same weekend. Civilians on both occasions.

So we immediately laid out the trade for Premium Members of ASC Research. You can access the...

Investors in the United States are panicking because their tech stocks are sucking.

Their irresponsibly large positions in Microsoft and Nvidia have come around to bite them in the rear.

Which investors have been sheltered from this pain? The ones who own Energy stocks! 

These shareholders have, for the most part, been treated poorly over the last 15 years. 

However, that wasn't the case in the post-COVID bull market. It also hasn't been the case so far this year.

As you can see, the Energy Sector SPDR $XLE is up over 8% this year. It's the best-performing sector.

Conversely, Technology $XLK and Consumer Discretionary $XLY have been significant laggards. They're the only sectors trailing the S&P 500.

We think this relative strength from energy can persist. Here's why 👇

The NYSE Natural Gas Index $XNG and the NYSE Oil & Gas Index $XOI are both in the process of resolving multi-decade basing patterns.

Structural trend reversals can be messy, but the path of...

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, we...

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

1. New position in XLY.
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!

Today's trade feels like a rare find: a stock in a clearly defined uptrend, at or near all-time highs, and appearing to want more.

And the underlying company couldn't be further away from the tech sector that still needs time to repair.

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

1. New position in XLI.
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!