From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

On Thursday, we mentioned the purchase made by the CEO of Asana $ASAN, Dustin Moskovitz, of $350 million  of ASAN stock through a private placement.

Moskovitz has completed the Form 4 filing.

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. You can 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:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

With stocks posting a broad rally this week, we found a handful of names from our Inside Scoop universe that are on the verge of breaking out from bullish chart patterns.

As we discussed on Wednesday’s call, even the leaders are struggling to hold new highs lately.

For this reason, we want to be patient with these setups and be prepared for false starts.

With that said, these are some of the strongest names from the strongest industry groups right now. 

If the market is kicking off a fresh rally, these are the kinds of stocks we expect to lead it.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our September Monthly Strategy Session Tuesday night. Premium Members can click here to watch the recording and review 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.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Loews Corp.

The New York City-based investment conglomerate reported a purchase of roughly $5.7 million in CNA Financial Corp $CNA.

The big insider transaction everyone is talking about this morning isn’t on our list, as there hasn’t been a filing yet.

Last night, during the Asana $ASAN earnings call, the company announced that its founder, Dustin Moskovitz, will be purchasing another $350 million worth of stock via a private placement.

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

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting 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.

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

Welcome to the Short Report.

This is the video recording of our September 7, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes in a 13D from Carl Icahn, who increased his ownership stake in Southwest Gas $SWX by 1%.

Icahn now owns 9.7% of outstanding shares, up from the 8.7% he reported on August 16.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 2, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers report.

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

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.