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 during their...

Me and Steve Strazza are currently aboard an airplane to Singapore for the beginning of our 21-day trip throughout Southeast Asia.

We're headed there to meet traders, chartists, and locals to learn how others approach risk.

And one thing that is on my mind is: "Where are we going to stay?"

This feels right as today's trade of the day often answers this question for many travelers.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

First stop, Singapore!

Steve Strazza and Sean McLaughlin are headed east on a whirlwind tour of Asia.

I must admit, I’m a bit jealous. And I’m not the jealous type!

They’ll visit seven cities over the course of the next month, meeting traders and financial professionals from the tip of the Malay Peninsula all the way to Japan.

I can’t physically travel with them, but I can live vicariously through their stories and videos, and, of course, my charts…

Check out the US dollar/Singapore dollar pair:

It’s not a bad time for Strazza and Sean to be in Singapore with greenbacks in their pockets.

Sure, it’s well off its September 2022 highs.

But it’s challenging the upper bounds of an eight-month range and looks poised to resolve higher.

If and when the USD/SGD breaks above 1.3575, I’m long with an initial target of 1.3875.  

I doubt the USD/SGD will...

From the Desk of Ian Culley

Healthy retest or failed breakout?

These are the scenarios rolling through my mind as I watch the Gold Miners ETF $GDX.

It’s easy to lean toward further weakness based on recent selling pressure and the five-year real yield breaking out to fresh decade highs. 

But who likes easy? I certainly don’t. I doubt gold bugs do, either.  

Luckily, I always defer to price action across multiple time frames for insight. As Brian Shannon always says, “It’s price that pays.”

And in the case of GDX, the charts aren’t as bearish as you might think…

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a slow day today, as you might expect on a Wednesday after a Tuesday holiday in July, and I believe the rest of the week will be this way.

Looks and feels like most traders have taken the week off.

From the Desk of Ian Culley

Healthy retest or failed breakout?

These are the scenarios rolling through my mind as I watch the Gold Miners ETF $GDX.

It’s easy to lean toward further weakness based on recent selling pressure and the five-year real yield breaking out to fresh decade highs. 

But who likes easy? I certainly don’t. I doubt gold bugs do, either.  

Luckily, I always defer to price action across multiple time frames for insight. As Brian Shannon always says, “It’s price that pays.”

And in the case of GDX, the charts aren’t as bearish as you might think…

Check out the monthly chart of GDX:

GDX closed the month of June above a critical shelf of former highs at approximately 30 despite slipping below that key level earlier in the month.

I find the monthly close constructive for the bullish case. The prospect of a healthy pullback remains viable as long as it holds above that key level.

On the other hand, the notion of a constructive retest loses validity if price undercuts those former highs.

Nevertheless, a look at last week’s candle entertains the possibility of a near-term...

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

Director Richard F. LaRoche filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase of 2,100 shares of National HealthCare Corporation $NHC.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The indices are lower this morning.

We have the release of the minutes from the most recent Fed meeting at 2:00 p.m. ET.

More and more "things" keep making new highs.

This is the sort of thing that happens in bull markets.

You can see Ethereum and Bitcoin both finding support the past year near former resistance levels from the highs in its prior cycle at the end of 2017:

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 Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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.

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...