Look at this mess.

The S&P500 is stuck below overhead supply, as we've discussed plenty around here.

And it's happening at a time that the S&P500 is supposed to be a mess. So this is perfectly normal.

Nevertheless, this is the predicament that S&Ps currently find themselves in...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended August 18, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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 @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 Kimmy Sokoloff

I believe we're in wait-and-see mode until Friday!

It's a "What Will Jerome Say?" market.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Sylebra Capital Ltd.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of 415,751 shares of Impinj Inc, equivalent to $25.2 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Some would say this is a big week.

With the Fed's Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on deck, all eyes will be on Jerome Powell.

Now we need to see if this rally lasts.

If so, $SPY has near-term potential to 441.

Are we all just going to assume that these consolidations in interest rates are about to resolve higher?

Seems like everyone around me considers this breakout to be foregone conclusion:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

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 Kimmy Sokoloff

After a volatile week finally Friday is here.

We had a few good trades to end the week.

This is the video recording of the August 18, 2023, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Inflation worries, higher yields, and the dollar rising typically spells trouble for equities.

I mentioned in the Live Trading Room yesterday that if the S&P 500  breaks 4,400 we can see 4,370. An overbought market can stay overbought, and an oversold market can stay oversold.

This has been a slow bleed lower. It's not an easy market to trade, so I tell people to back away or trade very small.

Everyone's a hero when the market goes up!

They're starting to hit a lot of names.

The Regime change in the market is real.

It's much different today than it was in the first half of the year.

And that's perfectly normal. Anything else would actually be very unusual.

The strategies that worked in the first 6 months are not working well in this environment. But the strategies that did NOT work in the first half of the year are much better in the current market.

See: Regime Change

For example, high volatility strategies were mostly terrible in the first half of the year. That's because we were in a low volatility environment. It was our low vol strategies that worked great for us.

So since the market is behaving differently now, then so are we.

Volatility is a little more elevated, so that means we're getting paid to play. That wasn't the case earlier this year.

Freeport McMoRan, for example, has some juicy premiums and is trading in a massive range.

Perfect: