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.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to new highs in order to focus...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The market keeps squeezing short sellers out of their biotech positions and rewarding bulls with big breakouts. 

Knowing this, our strategy is simple. We want to keep buying the best-looking and most heavily-shorted biotech stocks.

Today, we're covering one that has rallied nearly 200% since late last year. Despite this extreme upside momentum, the stock still has a massive short interest.

With the stock resolving a multi-year accumulation pattern, we think this short squeeze has plenty of room to run. To get back to the all-time highs from just a few years ago, it would require about a 10x.

We're looking for something much smaller and quicker for now, but you never know!

Let's talk about how we're trading our latest Freshly Squeezed setup.

Last week, we discussed China and Gold futures as potential catalysts for resolving a multi-decade basing pattern in Dr. Copper.

If we're in an environment where Copper futures are printing fresh all-time highs, then we should spend some time identifying opportunities in the equities market that benefit from rising base and industrial metal prices globally.

Over the last 6-months, the Steel $SLX, Copper $COPX, and Metals and Mining $XME ETFs have underperformed the S&P 500:

However, the weekly RRG is hinting at a potential rotation back into these stocks during this final quarter of 2024. All 3 of these ETFs are pointing higher and rotating out of the lagging quadrant and into the improving and leading quadrants.

With stock market investors looking every which way at different market-moving headlines today, let's take a step back and talk about what's really important.

We just got monthly candles. It's time to zoom out. 

And when we do, is there a chart more important than the US Dollar Index $DXY right now?

The dollar has had a very strong inverse correlation with stocks and other risk assets for several years now.

Equities have done well for the past two years while the dollar has been rangebound. 

Just imagine how they'll do if DXY breaks down from its current range:

This is the question investors should be asking themselves right now.
 
Instead of worrying about the war in the Middle East or the longshoremen and dockworkers striking…
 
The real question that matters for all our portfolios, not just today but over longer timeframes, is whether DXY digs in at this support level or breaks down.

If it's the former, look for today's corrective action to have some legs.

If it's the latter, we should be buying this dip aggressively.

Last week, we suggested...

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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

When it comes to our short-squeeze universe, the best trades tend to come from the junkiest stocks. 

In late 2022, we went dumpster diving for the most beat-up and heavily shorted stocks in the market and had some big winners. We were at the depths of the bear cycle, and the charts looked terrible. They were supposed to be zeros, but they weren't.

Just look at how Carvana $CVNA has performed since we were buying it at 8.25 almost 2-years ago.

Another junky group that has been working recently is the Marine Shipper industry.

Our custom Marine Shipping Index is on the verge of reclaiming the 61.8% retracement of its prior drawdown:

The unfortunate thing about most shippers is that they have little short interest.

But they trade like they do...

These stocks can rally several hundred percent in a short amount of time when they trend.

Even better, we're outlining a trade for one of the best-performing Marine Shippers and this one does have a massive short interest. We think this trade could be a multi-bagger.

...

Have you heard about China?

Chinese stocks just had their best week in history, following the People's Bank of China's (PBOC) announcement of rate cuts, among other stimulative actions.

In July, we talked about Copper and its base and industrial metal peers showing broad weakness. But that seems to be changing...

China is the world's largest consumer of refined copper, so base and industrial metals have benefited from the recent pivot from the PBOC.

Chinese stocks and copper futures have been positively correlated for years:

The 200-day rolling correlation flipped negative earlier this year but is positive again and has recently been screaming higher toward its highest positive correlation in history.

This week, the China Large-Cap ETF $FXI decisively broke a multi-year downtrend line and entered a new primary uptrend.

If the path of least resistance is higher for Chinese stocks, the 29th element should also catch a bid.

Earlier this year, Gold broke out to new all-time highs, but Copper...

Despite the gloomy headlines the market received this summer, major stock market sectors are showing resilience across the board, with new signs of life emerging. 

A shift seems to be on the horizon.

At the moment, we are long bonds. We like bonds, and the charts tell us we are right to like bonds here, but what does the future hold?

If inflation starts ticking up again, the market usually pivots toward the reflation trade—favoring sectors like energy, small caps, and financials as rates rise. (I am not saying that this is happening. I am saying that we need to keep an eye on this.) 

Energy has not participated in the bull run this year. When we compare XLE to some of the best stocks this cycle, like XLK, the performance gap is wild.

The chart below shows XLK up roughly 40% over the trailing 12 months while XLE is negative.

Meanwhile, the rally in bonds appears to be slowing down. 

Bonds have a traditionally inverse relationship with energy stocks, so we think this further sets the stage for a catch-up trade from oil and gas.

Oil...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

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-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

And here’s how we arrived at it…

We removed laggards which are down 5% or more relative to the ACWI Ex. U.S. Index $ACWX over the trailing month.

Then we sorted...

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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

It has been over 1,600 days since Crude Oil futures traded below zero in 2020, which preceded one of its best 2-year bull markets in history.

Since the peak in early 2022, energy has been a tough trade for those with trend-following strategies and a favorable one for mean-reversion strategies.

Crude Oil futures are at the lower bound of a multi-year range, and the Energy Sector SPDR $XLE has the fewest percent of stocks above their 200-day moving average out of all 11 sectors. 

Energy has been a laggard recently.

However, it's important to remember where energy has come from. Crude Oil futures went from below 0 to 130 in less than two years, and the XLE is the second best-performing sector since Covid, lagging only Technology $XLK:

The outperformance has been in the energy sector. Just not recently...

But that could be changing soon with energy futures digging in at major levels of interest.

Crude Oil futures are bouncing off a key level of polarity:

This is what former resistance turning into support looks like...