Silver is squeezing higher to new multi-month highs and looks poised to climb higher to fresh multi-decade highs shortly.

This is happening on the heels of this precious metals bull market recently turning 1 year old.

Gold futures are also trading above 3,000 dollars for the first time ever.

All of this combined has fueled the animal spirits in the mining industry.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended March 14th, 2025. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers, there’...

What a year this has been for the stock market.

These are historic returns being put up in 2025, so investors should be very pleased right?

Nope.

We have some of the most historically bearish sentiment on record. And it's mostly because Large-cap U.S. growth has been such a massive underperformer in 2025.

Look at these epic returns across Asia, Europe and Latin America. And compare them to the negative performance in the United States.

Listen, I understand that many Americans have an irresponsible amount of U.S. Large-cap Growth in their portfolio. 

I get that.

And those kinds of people are getting smoked in this environment. 

The U.S. is the last place you want to be invested this year. And the data shows.

What's hilarious is that in Q4 last year, the journalists parading around as economists suggested on the cover of their print magazine that the United States was the envy of the world.

...

Let me bottom line it for you.

During bull markets you regularly see the laggards catch up to the leaders. That sort of rotation is perfectly consistent with bull markets throughout history.

During bear markets, it's often the remaining leaders that ultimately catch down to the original losers leading the market lower.

And that's the big question right now. Is the fact that the U.S. is lagging lately just the beginning of more selling coming for stocks?

Or does the lagging U.S. catch up to the leaders all over the world.

Look at the expansion in participation across continents:

I think about it like this.

There have been and continue to be opportunities in stocks with exposure to these types of markets.

Remember that they are very different to the mega-cap Tech-heavy U.S. indexes. Foreign markets generally have a lot more exposure to Industrials, Financials and Natural Resources than American indexes.

As you can see, we continue to focus on the things that are working, and rotation is working. It often does during bull markets.

While all this is happening, we've already started to see relative strength from...

I'm constantly on the lookout for opportunities where market participants are most vulnerable.

If our data suggests that a market is too extended in one direction, I want to find ways to profit from an unwind in that positioning.

You saw it recently with how well we've done in our China trades, where 8 out of 8 trades since the election have all at least doubled in value. Think about how much money we've made in these stocks, despite any selling pressure you've seen in the United States recently.

It's not about the fundamentals. It's the positioning. No one owned Chinese stocks, and so the squeeze was on!

Last summer when all the libs were upset with Elon becoming besties with President Trump, we saw a tremendous opportunity to fade their negativity.

See: ...

Semiconductors rallied this week with Nvidia ripping almost 8%.

This all comes as journalists on basic cable tell your parents that the Nasdaq is in a correction.

You see how this works?

Here's Nvidia finding support at the same key extension levels where the buyers stepped up in the Fall:

As I've said a whole bunch of times, if the Semiconductor Index completes this massive top relative to the S&P500, then chances are that the bull market is cancelled.

With Semi's rallying this week, despite the selling pressure in other areas of the market, that alpha put the Semiconductor Index back above all that support, invalidating any bearish implications that may have occurred earlier in March:

If Semi's do actually break, then I believe there is a bigger structural problem in the market, particularly in U.S. equities.

Global equities continue to act well, pointing more towards a rotation, rather than a full blown credit event....

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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.

Copper futures have so many tailwinds working for it right now. We think it's ready to breakout to new all-time highs.

We've talked about the strong positive correlation it has with Chinese stocks. This remains the case. 

In addition, base and industrial metals have been ripping. Just look at the setup in Aluminum futures. 

We think it would make sense for Dr. Copper to lead its peers higher. This has already been playing out in precious metals.

The shiny yellow rock has been leading its peers higher, and now Silver futures are a stone's throw away from multi-decade highs. 

Gold futures hit 3,000 for the first time to make things even sweeter. Surpassing...

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.

Here's this week's list:

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.

This is a very big deal, especially when...

The selling in US Growth stocks continues. 

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. 

This is strictly on a personal level,...