From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our January Monthly Strategy Session last week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Timothy C. Wentworth, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance $WBA.

Wentworth reported a purchase of 10,000 WBA shares, equivalent to $242,220.

The NYSE new 52-week high list peaked on December 14th. That puts us almost a month into some kind of correction underneath the surface.

And this sort of behavior is fine in bull markets. Go back and look over the past 100 years. It's actually perfectly normal.

Last week we discussed what a bigger correction might look like, and what the market would have to do to hold on to its ongoing uptrend.

Let's remember, the Dow Jones Industrial Avg rallied 5000 points in 2 months. Give it a break.

See: New Year & New Trends

Among the most important groups of stocks comes Financials, of course.

Here is arguably the most important component in the U.S. Financials Index going out at new all-time highs:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 5, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

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.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Broadwood Partners LP.

The investment firm reported a purchase of roughly $6.4 million in STAAR Surgical Company $STAA.

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 around the world.

Here's this week's list:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The only transaction on today’s list comes in a 13G filed  by Point72 Asset Management.

The hedge fund revealed an initial stake of 5.40% in C4 Therapeutics Inc $CCCC.

This is the video recording of the January 3, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The only transaction on today’s list comes in a 13G filed  by Riposte Capital.

The firm increased its stake in SilverBow Resources $SBOW from 7.75% to 9.70%.

Santa didn't show up this year for his annual Santa Claus Rally.

Historically, that usually precedes some underwhelming years for the S&P500.

This is the first leg of the January Trifecta, which also includes "The First 5 Days" and the "January Barometer".

Does the S&P500 put in a positive First 5 days of the year?

As January goes, so goes the rest of the year, is how I learned it.

We'll continue to monitor the rest of the Trifecta as the data comes in.

But first, let's reiterate that the S&P500 did NOT rally during a seasonally strong period known as the Santa Claus Rally.

And while this "indicator" is normally reserved for the S&P500, I wanted to widen it out to other equities to get a broader look:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach.

It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying 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.