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...

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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point...

It's a new year. But does that mean we need to see new trends?

Well I think we're definitely going to see new trends emerging. But I have a strong suspicion that a lot of the old trends will remain in place as well.

If you recall, back in July we were looking at a bunch of the leading groups running into their former highs from late 2021.

These groups included Industrials, Semiconductors, Homebuilders and Mega-cap Technology.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by James F. Lynch, director  of Globalstar Inc $GSAT.

Lynch reported a purchase of GSAT shares with a total value of $963,700.

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...

This is the video recording of our January 2nd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

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.

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...

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 $6.4 million in KalVista Pharmaceuticals Inc $KALV.

2023 turned out to be a great year for investors.

It was really hard not to make a lot of money last year.

And while the trends for stocks and many other risk assets are certainly up, we want to be identifying what the market will have to do for us to position ourselves much more defensively into the new year.

The first warning of a non-so-great market environment would be a breakdown in the Nasdaq100 and Small-cap Russell2000.

Look at those former highs in QQQ from late 2021. If the Nasdaq100 ETF is below 400, that would put it back below those former highs, increasing the vulnerability for further downside, or even a grind sideways.

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone for all the kind words throughout the year.

Your support and this community you helped build is inspiring to us all.

I'm incredibly grateful.

Thank you.

Now let's get into it.

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...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Annexon Inc $ANNX director Muneer A. Satter.

Satter reported a purchase of $1 million in $ANNX.