From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

With earnings season underway, financials are making a statement this week.

The first few weeks of reporting are always heavy with banks and financial stocks. As these are the market laggards, we knew we would get some critical information from their earnings reactions.

While it hasn't been fireworks to the upside by any means, there also hasn't been much downside from these stocks.

It is never a bad thing if the bears can't take down the weakest stocks. That's what is going on right now.

Meanwhile, more and more bullish setups keep crossing our desk. It's all very constructive.

Let's talk about two we like right now.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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:

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Cormorant Asset Management.

Cormorant revealed an additional purchase of $58 million in Ambrx Biopharma $AMAM.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

What a week, though we've been pretty much range-bound.

Yesterday we started to dip in the late afternoon.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Wild action again today...

We were down in the morning, then we rallied for a bit till about 2:00 p.m. ET, then we had a complete fade into the close.

The weakness in the US Dollar over the past couple of quarters comes as no surprise to us.

The journalists nailed it again.

What else is new?

But here's what really has surprised me.

If you would have told me in September that the Dollar would fall apart over the next 2 quarters, I would have told you that precious metals are likely doing well in that environment. I would have also said that Silver would outperform Gold during that period.

In this case I would have been absolutely right.

Great.

But what I would have also been confident about is foreign equities doing well in that weaker Dollar environment.

And while I would have also been correct in that guess, I would have definitely told you that it would be Emerging Markets outperforming, not Developed Markets.

And that would have been very wrong.

It's been the Developed Markets outside the U.S. that have been dominating the equities markets over the past couple of quarters. Look at the performance of these assets since the Dollar peaked:

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

The most significant insider transaction is a 13D filed by Redmile Group.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It's a real tug of war between the bulls and the bears.

Each day we start the morning lower, and then we gradually trend higher.

Someone will win soon.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Monday night we held our March Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

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 of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

In bull markets you regularly see more and more stocks making new highs.

That's just a normal characteristic of this type of market environment.

Yesterday we saw a ton of stocks making new 52-week highs - names like Nvidia, AstraZeneca, Salesforce, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, Chipotle, Autozone, Motorola, Lennar and many others.

However, in aggregate we have yet to see that key breakout in breadth expansion in the new 52-week highs list.

The new lows list is non existent. It's been that way since the 4th quarter last year.

But where the new highs at?

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Ares Management.

The hedge fund revealed an additional purchase of roughly $4.2 million in Frontier Communications Parent $FYBR.