The most notable names with the big gains these last two three days have been sugar stocks. And today we're going to go over a bunch of stocks that are displaying great strength and momentum at present. It's a sweet deal you guys, you're gonna wanna check it out!

Sugar stocks continue to power through and are the sweet spot of the market. They benefit from the rising ethanol price and broad strength in the agriculture produces segment.

Abdiel Capital filed a Form 4 yesterday revealing a purchase of an additional 105,500 shares in the software company Appian Corp $APPN.

The firm also made a large purchase in February in the amount of roughly $6.5 million. It now owns nearly 6 million shares of APPN, representing an ownership stake of approximately 14%.

Another software stock, Shift4 Payments $FOUR, had insider activity reported, as the chairman of the board and CEO, Jared Isaacman, filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase worth approximately $1.7 million. 

Isaacman now owns 334,742 shares of FOUR.

Price trends have been a tad bit clear in the week gone by and some of that has translated to new trade ideas. This week we're looking at a name from the Consumer Durables sector.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1B 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.

The way we did this is simple…

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

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

In today’s action, there was a large inside purchase reported by Sequoia Capital in the food delivery company DoorDash $DASH.

Sequoia has been a long-time investor in the stock.

In other insider purchases, Durable Capital Partners reported a buy worth roughly $5 million in Duolingo $DUOL.

And an Ambarella $AMBA director disclosed a purchase of just over $1 million in his company’s stock.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A also disclosed more buying in Occidental Petroleum $OXY.

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

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, which you can check out here.

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.

And here’s how we arrived at it:

We continue to see insider buying in a lot of the same names.

And the Baker brothers are making an appearance on The Hot List, as we suggested during our recent webinar. 

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge

Sideways has been the theme for most risk assets since they peaked in the first half of last year. Markets have become increasingly messy in the time since.

If we’re talking about US equities, the market is as bifurcated as it’s been in years.

All we mean by this is that depending on what group a stock is in, it could be in a nice uptrend, but it could also be in an ugly downtrend. Stocks and other risk assets are literally moving in opposite directions these days, and doing so with some serious momentum.

At the index level, you can see this split market reflected by trendless ranges. 

When we look to our risk-appetite ratios and indicators for information, we’re not getting much as the vast majority are still stuck in the same ranges they’ve been in for the better part of 12-months.

So, risk assets are a mess and most of our risk indicators are also a mess. Makes sense, right?

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the first issue of The Inside Scoop.

We’ve seen a lot of interesting insider activity since we started publishing our scans last week.

So far this year, commodity stocks have been in a league of their own. Energy and cyclical names have continued to rally higher, while just about everything else – especially growth – continues to slide lower.

In the spirit of this split market, today we’ll discuss a number of stocks showing leadership that we think have more upside in the tank. But we’ll also cover a lagging growth stock that we think we can book some quick gains in on a mean-reversion move.

Also, make sure to check out our Hot List Radar report, which includes all the stocks we’re watching that recently experienced bullish insider buying.

Let’s dive in.

We have a couple of billionaire sightings toward the top of today’s Hot List.

And we also have some congressional activity in the energy space to report.