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.
Contrary to popular belief, we're not just Americans. We're earthlings.
I think that gets forgotten, especially after the United States stock market outperformed practically everything else for so long.
You have a combination of home country bias and you have the recency bias layered on top of that.
So when U.S. Technology is an underperformer, as it has been since last summer, many investors with too much exposure in those areas are blinded by their losing, to see all the winning that's going on around them.
China, for example, just closed the week out at new 4-month highs. The CSI 300 is basically the S&P500 of China, and just closed at the highest levels since early November.
Meanwhile, you're seeing the German DAX this morning working on the highest weekly close in the country's history.
Whether it does or doesn't, the relative strength in Germany has been off the charts, despite any selling pressure you've seen in the U.S.
Keep in mind that outside of the American Indexes (S&P500, Dow & Nasdaq), I would put Germany right at the top of the most important markets list.
But why have European stocks and China done so well?
They don't have any US Growth stocks in their indexes.
While the selling pressure in these stocks has accelerated recently, the underperformance has been there since last summer. We've been pointing out that High Beta never broke out relative to Low Volatility stocks while the major indexes were making new highs.
And now they're making new lows. Look at the underperformance from Tech along with the underperformance in High Beta:
And I'll be the first to tell you that it affects me too. Remember, that on a personal level, my wife and I have retirement accounts and we have 3 kids with college funds. I'm not immune to the selling in US Growth stocks.
I'm right in there with you guys, regardless of what I do for my day job.
Now, this is a great example of why we don't want to limit ourselves to a long only strategy in U.S. stocks.
I've already got plenty of that stuff. Too much, if you ask me. So I need to go out of my way to find additional sources of income and returns.
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...
I've got some good news, some not so good news, and some outright bad news.
Let's dive in.
First of all, these are all concepts that were discussed at length on our LIVE Monthly Charts Strategy Session last week, so check out the full video here.
As an update, here's the most bullish thing happening in stocks right now. Both Germany and Hong Kong closed the week at new highs. These are new 3-year highs for the Hang Seng and new all-time highs for the DAX:
If there was some sort of Global Crisis or Credit Event of any kind, my bet is NOT that these two major indexes would be breaking out to new highs.
These are not safe havens where investors can hide out and wait for the storm to pass. It's quite the opposite actually.
So strength out of these areas above points to bullish and healthy...
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...
There's never a dull moment in the market. It's always something.
The mixed messages are a feature, not a bug.
That's just how it's always been. So it's our job to weigh all the evidence and make the best decisions we can make, knowing full well that we have incomplete information.
Today I want to talk about 2 theories that may or may not be playing out, but it's something I'm thinking about.
First, is this thing about investor sentiment. How is it possible that individual investors in America are the most bearish they've been since the bottom of the last bear market back in 2022?
I think it's because of what they own.
They're not in China, which is making new 3-year highs.