Breadth has expanded in a big way since last week, with more and more stocks finally joining in on the bull market as big-cap tech leaders take a breather.
At the sector and industry group level, our list of indexes that are in uptrends continues to grow.
Some notable new members on this list include regional banks, small-caps, and various speculative growth funds.
After years of basing in accumulation patterns, these groups are just now completing primary trend reversals.
What does this mean?
In its simplest form, it means there are more ponds we can fish in for long opportunities. There are more stocks -- and groups of stocks -- that are in uptrends.
It’s just more options for us.
One of the groups that has broken out with authority recently is the biotechs.
Regardless of what index you're looking at, the path of least resistance is now higher for this health care subsector.
We’ve identified some of the strongest biotech stocks with asymmetric risk/reward setups and clear levels to trade against.
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.
Look at this chart. While people are telling you that the market is in a bubble, things are parabolic and this is unsustainable, the largest weighting of the most important stock market gauge hasn't even done anything for years.
As most of you know, we use 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.
Rather than taking the time to actually go one by one counting each of the stocks that are going up, down, or sideways, humans would rather skip that altogether in favor of their favorite Index or some kind of statistic.
You don't need any sophisticated math skills in order to count how well or poorly the stock market is doing.
The stock market is in the middle of one of its fiercest multi-day rallies in recent history.
Since last week, there has been a notable expansion in breadth, with areas like small caps, regional banks, biotechs, and speculative growth joining the bull market party.
Long story short, investors are beginning to move out on the risk spectrum and embrace some of the riskiest stocks the market has to offer.
Another way to see this offensive positioning is by analyzing the performance of the stocks that investors are betting against the most.
Names with sky-high short interests continue to work in this environment.
As such, it's time to run it back with another Freshly Squeezed report.
Here's how we do things...
We find the most heavily shorted stocks in the market. We wait for momentum to come into these names. And then we ride them higher as the bears get squeezed.
We got new short data last week, so let's dive in and talk about it.
Our scan is quite simple. It is designed to identify stocks with the most aggressive short positions.
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 now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.
