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 January 3, 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.

Israel outperformed the United States stock market in 2024, and that trend has spilled over into 2025.

Camtek $CAMT is one of the hottest Israeli stocks, but the bears still hate it. 

The stock has a record-high 14% short interest and an 8x days-to-cover ratio. 

This extreme mispositioning is blowing up in the bears' faces as they've been freshly squeezed.

The coal industry is one of the most under-the-radar ponds to fish in.

Investors write it off because "clean energy" will displace the industry. While this is likely true, we think it will take far longer than most expect. 

In the meantime, this extreme mispositioning is our opportunity to profit.

You would have made a fortune if you bought these stocks at the depths of the COVID crash. Far more than if you purchased the hottest "work from home" stock.

These stocks had their best day in years last summer after a major Australian coal mine caught fire and halted production. 

While we haven't seen the upside follow-through we anticipated, the setup looks ripe for the bulls to take control.

Let's dive into the charts.

For the market to experience a meaningful correction, we need to see clear signs of defensive rotation—and so far, that hasn’t happened.

In the bond market, U.S. Treasuries are viewed as the defensive play, especially compared to their High Yield counterparts. 

It’s the same concept in equities when you compare Consumer Staples to the broader S&P 500. If the environment favors risk-taking, both Treasuries and Staples should underperform.

Overlaying the Treasuries versus High-Yield ratio (IEI/HYG) with the Staple vs S&P 500 ratio (XLP/SPY), you’ll notice they move in the same direction.

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:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

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.

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.

We've been pounding the table on Walgreens Boots Alliance as one of the best potential short squeezes in the entire market. We nailed it!

The stock rallied nearly 30% on Friday for its best earnings reaction ever. 

This isn't an isolated event. Short sellers are getting squeezed all over the place.

Healthcare is one sector that is particularly ripe for a short squeeze. It's home to some of the most hated stocks in the world.

Stocks like Progyny are precisely what we're looking for, and here's why:

The commodity bears are going into hibernation.

Today was the best day in years for commodities relative to stocks and bonds. 

Inflation expectations are hitting a fresh 30-month high, with crude oil's price breaking out to 10-week highs.

We think this is the beginning of a much longer period of commodity outperformance.

A few weeks ago, we told you a big move in the energy markets was coming. We think this recent price action has marked the beginning of that move.

In addition, we outlined why we're buying copper futures last week, and so far, that trade has been a home run.

What's next?

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:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We love our bottoms-up scans here at All Star Charts. We tend to get really creative when making new universes as we want to be sure they will deliver us the best opportunities the market has to offer.

However, when it comes to this one, it couldn't be any simpler!

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US stocks.

Welcome to The Junior Hall of Famers.

This scan is composed of the next 150 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 150 and are thus covered by the Hall of Famers universe. Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

There is no need to overcomplicate things. Market cap is a quality filter at the end of the day. It only grows if price is rising. That's good enough for us.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

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.