Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended April 12, 2024. 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.
In today's Flow Show, me and Steve Strazza took a look at some potential directional bets, but we both agreed that the right trade for today is one that would benefit from some sideways trading action.
With the broader markets looking a bit indecisive here, making a strong directional bet (in either direction) feels like a high-risk proposition. But there's a big cap name currently stuck in a range that is offering us nice options premiums to bet on further sideways action. We'll likely have to hold through an earnings event to earn our profit, but with a defined risk and a large margin for error, I like our chances.
There is a big theme going on right now - and that's the inability for important indexes to get above their 2021 highs.
You're seeing it at the individual stock level, you're seeing it across specific sectors and industry groups, and you're definitely seeing it in the S&P500 and Nasdaq100 Equally-weighted.
These indexes below eliminate the excessive weightings in certain stocks and sectors and equally-weight all of its components.
Look at both of them still stuck below their 2021 highs:
It’s easy to overlook while gold shines and silver rips. But during the last commodity supercycle, platinum traded at a premium to the famous shiny yellow rock (and still does regarding retail jewelry).
Platinum was a powerhouse!
Check out gold and platinum futures overlaid going back to the 1970s:
Both peaked within a month of each other in the early 1980s and experienced rip-roaring rallies during the 2000s.
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.
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.
