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.
The stock market (as measured by the indexes) continues to trek higher, speculative fervor keeps building (as measured by what's happening in crypto), and these forces are combining to make it a dangerous environment to be caught short in.
And if you're short a name that already has a high short interest? Look out!
So naturally, today's trade is a play on punishing the stubborn shorts in a particular stock that look like they are on the verge of getting epically squeezed.
In today's Flow Show on Stock Market TV, me and Strazza get into why we love buying short-dated calls in Carvana $CVNA:
There is a time and a place for everything in this market.
One of the more fascinating groups of stocks for me right now (and always for that matter) is when a stock has a very high short interest, and is making new highs.
You see, here's what many people fail to remember:
Short sellers are promising to be buyers in the future. Shareholders are only promising to be sellers.
And so what that means to us is that the more short sellers there are in a given stock, the more investors there are promising to buy the stock in the future.
In their view, they would ideally like to buy these stocks back at lower prices (for a profit).
But what happens instead, in many cases, is that they are forced to cover at much higher prices (for massive losses).
Commodities are in the early innings of a secular bull run.
The list of raw materials hitting all-time highs since 2020 includes Gold, Copper, Wheat, Soybean Oil, Cattle, Orange Juice, Cocoa, Heating Oil, Gasoline, Palm Oil, Lumber, Tin, Rebar, Iron Ore, and Coal. (If that roll call doesn’t scream commodity supercycle, I don’t know what does.)
It’s an exhaustive list that will only grow in the coming years. Remember, these cycles can last decades. We’re only in year four!
Of course, there are also some laggards amongst the ranks. (ahem, Crude). But don’t lose sight of the bigger picture!
Even Soybeans are queuing up for new all-time highs…
Check out soybean futures zoomed out to the 1950s:
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 around $3T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Arista Networks and Airbnb.
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.