We’ve already had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we began rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan “Under The Hood” earlier this year.
We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…
For about a year now, we’ve focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B. That was fun, but we think it’s time we branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.
This week we’re looking at a long setup in the Services sector. With the move in the week gone by, there are only a few pockets of strength to track. And this is one of them.
Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 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 100 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.
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 Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
September saw significant selling pressure in equity markets. The S&P 500 suffered its worst drawdown since last year, and many of the major indexes made a lower low. But when we look under the surface, it really wasn’t that bad.
We didn’t get an expansion in new lows to confirm the new lows in price. Instead, these readings remained muted across most of the major averages in the US.
Since then, the bulls have regained control. Breadth has improved throughout October as the indexes have rallied back toward their former highs. Although we haven’t seen a real expansion in participation at the index level, things have definitely been moving in the right direction.
Let's talk about it.
Here’s a look down the cap scale at new 52-week highs for all three S&P indexes, from large to small:
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
On Tuesday night we held our October Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and re-watch 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.
From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
Most risk assets peaked during Q1 or May of this year and have consolidated in sideways ranges ever since.
But the bulls have started to take control of many of these trends. We're seeing more and more upside resolutions -- and this phenomenon isn't limited to Crude Oil, Rates, AUD/JPY, and cyclical stocks. Similar patterns are also playing out when we look at intermarket ratios, particularly those we use to measure risk appetite.
In today’s post, we'll dive into one of our favorite risk-appetite relationships and check for price confirmation in a variety of ratios.
First up is none other than large-cap consumer discretionary versus consumer staples stocks:
They love writing about 'Selling in May and going away'.
Every year, they just can't get enough of it.
But what about, "Remember to buy in November"?
Historically the best 3 month period of the year for stocks is from November through January.
As my pal Jeff Hirsch likes to say, "Buy in October and Get Yourself Sober".
Here are all the seasonal cycles for the S&P500. The Green line includes every year since 1950 (1-year Cycle), the Blue line includes every year ending in 1 since 1951 (Decennial Cycle), and in Gray every post-election year since 1953 (Presidential Cycle):
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. What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind… and they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny.
Welcomeback to our latest "Under The Hood" column, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended October 15, 2021. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our "Minor Leaguers" column.
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.
