From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a 13D filing by Carl Icahn.

Icahn revealed an initial stake in JetBlue Airways Corporation $JBLU of 9.91%.

Rug Pull Season is here!

You guys know me well by now. I'm not exactly one of these fearmongers who spends decades trying to convince people that the next big crash is coming.

There are already plenty of those around.

I'm just trying to make money.

This is a very selfish endeavor for me.

Goal #1: Keep my money. I already have plenty. I want to make sure to hang on to it.

Goal #2: Turn all my money into even more money.

In that order...

There are different ways to accomplish these goals.

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.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list now, 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 to...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our February Monthly Strategy Session last week. ASC Premium Members can click here to watch the replay and download the chartbook.

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 most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Aon plc $AON director Lester B. Knight.

Knight reported a purchase of 50,000 AON shares, equivalent to $15 million.

There are a few questions that need to be answered before proceeding as an investor of any timeframe.

These questions apply to longer-term investors, day traders, and everyone in between.

We're shorting bank stocks now too.

More details on that below.

But first...

Breaking News: "Dow Futures fell 100 points and the VIX rose this Friday on news of new all-time highs for the stock market"

The breadth continues to deteriorate with every week that goes by.

You notice?

You can see it in our trades as well. While the puts on our $SPY and $QQQ haven't started to work yet, the bearish trades on individual stocks are all either working or flat.

It's interesting. What you see in happening in the portfolio, you can also see happening in the market itself.

We saw new all-time highs this week for the S&P500. But we had the fewest stocks in the S&P500 above their 200 day moving average since December. And the fewest above their 50 day moving average since November.

...

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 remaining names by their proximity to new 52-week highs.

This leaves us...

This is the video recording of the February 9, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners.

The firm reported a purchase of roughly $1.2 million in KalVista Pharmaceuticals Inc $KALV.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Magnolia Capital Fund.

The investment firm revealed a purchase of $2.5 million in America's Car-Mart Inc $CRMT.

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 new highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that exhibit 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.

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

Welcome to the Short Report.

We publish this...