The stage is set for a strategic shift.

Since this summer, safe haven assets have been catching a bid and outperforming across the board.

Investors are paying attention to growth indicators like ISM and PMI data. Other investors are looking at CPI and paying extra-close attention to the Fed… 

Here's the US Core Inflation Rate along with the 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF $IEF. Since inflation peaked and rolled over in 2022, bonds have been building a massive base:

However, similar to economic growth data, inflation is a lagging indicator.

The same is true for employment.

Here's the unemployment rate along with the 2s/10s spread.

We are starting to see some pressure in the labor market, which goes hand-in-hand with rising treasury spreads.

July job openings dropped to 7.67 million, the lowest since January 2021. This marks a significant decline from the March 2022 peak of 12.2 million. 

There were only 1.1 jobs for every unemployed person, down from 2.0 last year. Major declines were seen in healthcare, government, and transportation. Voluntary quits decreased to 3.3 million...

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...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The biotech market has a great divide between the haves and have-nots. Some stocks have experienced tremendous markup phases, while others can't seem to get out of the doghouse.

Today, we're covering a biotech stock that has rallied nearly 200% this year. 

Despite this rally, the short sellers have continued to add to their positions and are close to carrying their largest short position ever.

With the stock coiling at a shelf of former highs from last summer, we're betting the short sellers are on the verge of unwinding their positions and sparking a short squeeze.

The current market environment is creating a unique opportunity for bonds. 

With the charts signaling strong potential for gains into year-end, now is the moment to take action and add some bond exposure to your portfolio. 

With some big reversals underway, the timing couldn’t be better to capitalize on these new trends. 

Not only are we seeing a growing list of base breakouts for treasuries, corporate bonds, and bond ETFs, but the intermarket landscape is turning increasingly favorable for fixed income in general.

Let’s jump in and discuss why we’re buying bonds here and how we want to express this thesis.

The fed is giving us a clear indication these days that we’ve seen the peak in interest rates for now. The odds of a rate cut at the September meeting in a few weeks are at 67.5%. 

Click the table to enlarge the view.

This data is from the CME FedWatch Tool as of August 29, 2024.

In this kind of...

If you're like me, you probably spend too much money on coffee every morning.

And that's not likely to change... but that's okay!

We can profit from an upside move in the commodity and hedge our exposure.

We've had tremendous success trading Cocoa futures in the last several years. 

We're also close to buying Cotton futures as they look to trap the bears below a key polarity zone.

There's a trend here: soft commodities keep rewarding us for owning them.

We think Coffee is next.

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...

Gold has not only been shining in absolute terms but is also dramatically outperforming the broader commodity complex.

While energy chops around in a multi-year range and cattle carve out a distribution pattern, the glittering ore refuses to quit printing new all-time highs.

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...

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:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the...

It has paid to pick our spots wisely in the commodities complex as it's been a very bifurcated asset class this cycle.

Live and Feeder Cattle are carving out distribution patterns.

Energy has been a rangebound mess.

Meanwhile, the relative strength has been in the soft commodities and precious metals.

Gold recently put the finishing touches on a multi-decade accumulation pattern.

Cocoa has resolved a 12-year base and rallied over 400% to new all-time highs.

Coffee is flirting with new multi-decade highs after completing a tactical reversal pattern.

And we're betting that Cotton will participate to the upside with the rest of the soft complex soon. The soft and fluffy commodity is on the verge of trapping the bears below a key level of polarity.

We want to continue leaning into the relative strength in soft commodities.