In yesterday's note we talked about the lack of progress in most U.S. Stocks and Indexes over the past several months.

It's been a frustrating market for some traders.

That's why we've been doing this instead.

Look at the Median stock right now, stuck at the exact same price it was way back in December.

We're now in May:

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 our latest project, 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 Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

As equity markets continue to repair the damage from April’s correction, we continue to find more and more stocks -- and groups of stocks -- that we want to be buying.

A growing number of those groups are coming from the financial sector. 

Financials have made a comeback in the last week as a handful of financial indexes and individual issues are reclaiming their prior-cycle highs.

The relative trends are improving as well, with the large cap sector SPDR $XLF hitting new 52-week highs versus the S&P 500 recently.

When we think about the strongest stocks within financials, asset management and capital market stocks are top of mind.

In today’s post, we will dive in and outline some of our favorite charts in the space.

Before we do that, here’s the SPDR S&P Capital Markets ETF $KCE pressing against its former highs from 2021:

How's this messy market treating you?

Are you happy the market is a mess? Or do you find it frustrating?

Keep in mind, the S&P500 is still at the same price it was 2 months ago.

Both the Nasdaq100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are still at the same prices they were back in February.

We're almost half way through May.

The Technology Index, which is the largest component of the S&P500 (30%) and has the largest weighting in the Nasdaq100 (50%), is still where it was back in January.

Again we're half way through May!

Meanwhile, don't forget about the Small-cap Russell2000 that's hilariously still stuck below where it was way back in December.

The Consumer Discretionary Index and Dow Jones Transportation Average are also down for the year.

That's the market we're in.

Some people keep pretending that this year is just like last year.

But I cheated. I actually looked at the data. So I know better.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

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.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Buyers are coming to the dollar’s rescue following last week’s drop.

But I’m still bearish. 

Of course, none of that matters if the US Dollar Index $DXY continues to rally and these trade setups fail to trigger entry signals.

Here’s a quick look at the DXY finding support at a critical retracement level:

It’s a logical area for dollar bulls to take a stand as a shelf of former highs act as support.

However, crude oil's slide below a similar shelf of former highs raises doubts about a sustained bullish defense. 

Here are the returns of a series of country ETFs since October.

Notice how the ones from the U.S. are further down the list than you might expect.

At the top you've got Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Mexico:

No setup gets me more excited than buying a fresh new all-time high.

There are no bagholders looking to unload their losing position to breakeven. Every investor or trader holding a long position is making money. And every trader holding a short position is losing money and the only way they correct that sad state of affairs is to buy stock to stop their losses.

In other words, blue skies above.

This doesn't guarantee success on a long trade here, of course. But these are the types of trades that commonly lead to my biggest gains.

Here's a weekly chart of semiconductor name Analog Devices $ADI:

The Small-cap Indexes in America have had a tough time for a while now.

Since the start of 2022, both of these Small-cap Indexes have actually produced a negative return.

The S&P600 Small-cap Index requires companies to have a track record of earnings in order to be included in the index.

The Russell2000 lets anyone in. It doesn't matter how much money you lose, if your market cap is above $300 Million, then you're in.

Both of them have been terrible.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Stock market bulls are scooping and scoring as the Nasdaq Composite, the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average all show green. 

Stocks and rocks should benefit on the heels of renewed rate-cut hopes. 

Today, I’ll outline a name that checks both boxes. 

Spoiler alert: It’s a prime candidate for a short squeeze…

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.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

It's amazing what price action can do to change sentiment.

We went from frothy optimism just a couple of months ago, to a much more pessimistic environment for investors.

This table below is a great summary of the different gauges we look at to measure sentiment and what they've done over the past month.

The blue diamonds are the current readings and the gray triangles represent where these were a month ago.