From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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:

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From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

The FOMC meeting is out of the way and the quiet period for Fed speakers that preceded it has ended. We are now getting a barrage of “how we got it wrong” inflation retrospectives and “how we can get it right” policy tightening perspectives from Federal Reserve Presidents and Governors. A proper understanding of both of these helps explain the path we’ve traveled and what might lay ahead. While labor supply crunches and supply chain disruptions have played their part, the Fed seems to have forgotten Milton Friedman’s famous quote: “Inflation is always & everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Money supply rose 25% in 2020 and another 13% in 2021. The Fed’s balance sheet expanded by 78% in 2020 and another 18% in 2021. Inflation soared and has proven not to be transitory in large part because these liquidity increases have persisted. If the Fed is going to get ahead of inflation, it will have to stop blaming exogenous factors and focus on the instruments over which it has some control. And Financial assets will have...

This is the video recording of our March 18, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

Is that a dead cat bounce in the Biotech ETF $XBI that will quickly fade? Or is this week's hard pivot off the $80 level the new floor?

I don't know the definitive answer, but the bet I'm going to make is that $80 will hold at least for a few weeks. If it does and as long as $XBI doesn't overshoot on the upside from here, I think this ETF is offering us a great opportunity to sell some premium here.

So let's get into how I'd like to play it.

We’ve talked a lot about the unusual options activity in commodity stocks like Freeport-McMoRan $FCX in recent weeks and months. 

Yesterday, we saw more of the same, as options traders made some major splashes in April monthly calls for both the oil services giant Schlumberger $SLB and the British integrated oil and gas name Shell Plc $SHEL.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Yesterday, we discussed one of our favorite stocks from the hot list right now and today, we have another new idea.

Before we get there though, let’s reiterate yesterday’s trade.

This is the video recording of the March 17th Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche

03/17/22 2:00 PM ET

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

To the surprise of no one, the Federal Reserve voted to raise its target fed funds rate at yesterday’s FOMC meeting. The 25 basis-point rate hike was fully priced into the futures market. There was only one dissenting vote – St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard expressed a preference for a 50 basis point hike at this meeting. 

I’ll admit I was surprised that neither Esther George (from the Kansas City Fed) or Loretta Mester (from the Cleveland Fed) joined Bullard in his dissent. At the end of the day, the Fed is now in tightening mode, and the pace of tightening is likely to pick up over the course of the year between the combined effects of interest rate hikes and balance sheet drawdowns.

I’m not going to parse the FOMC statement, dissect the dot plot, or break down the summary economic projections. Much of what needs to be said (and a lot of what didn’t need to be said) about the Fed’s decision has been offered in print, over the airwaves, and in our virtual communities...

One of the key themes we've been monitoring in the crypto ecosystem is the movement to a new era dominated by an increasing number of derivative vehicles at investors' disposal.

In previous Bitcoin cycles, investors primarily moved to cash through selling spot.

Now, with a liquid futures market, savvy traders have been hedging their positions (today's equivalent of going to cash) by shorting calendar futures.

This constant selling pressure in calendar futures has driven the term structure lower over the last few months and is a reliable metric for both long and short time frame analysis.

Durable Capital Partners continues to be active, now with an $8.5 million purchase of software company Clearwater Analytics Holdings $CWAN.

In recent weeks, the investment firm has also made filings for purchases in Duolingo $DUOL and Warby Parker $WRBY.

We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us towards the very best stocks in the market. This time around, we have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: There is abundant focus on weekly and monthly surveys showing evidence of investor pessimism with regard to equities. This is at odds with the strategic positioning indicators showing that stocks are expensive and households are historically over-exposed to equities (relative to bonds, but also relative to bonds plus cash). The last two times that II bears exceeded bulls (in 2019 and 2020), household asset allocation data showed only 53% exposure to equities. As of the end of 2021, it was at 62%, an all-time high. So while investors may be identifying themselves as bearish, there is little evidence that investable cash is on the sidelines. With the Fed now raising rates and the market re-considering valuation levels, this lack of available firepower could weigh on equities. Whether today’s pessimism represents a cyclical extreme remains to be seen.               

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Household Equity Exposure Hits New High

US households finished 2021 with...

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 during...

The move in metals, commodities, and materials was pretty rapid during the last couple of months. Given that, it's little surprise we've seen a pullback in a lot of these names over the past week or so.

One name that was recently on our Hall of Famers report rose rapidly with everyone else. And now it feels like it overshot a bit on it's pullback and it's offering a nice tactical opportunity to swoop in and steal some profits.

Anyone familiar with the endeavor of trading has eventually realized the flaws of our human instincts. This isn't isolated to investing.

It's a widely documented phenomenon that we're constantly susceptible to subconscious biases.

We're approaching this from the lens of technical analysis. But apophenia is universal to the human condition.

Apophenia: the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas).

Let's run through some examples and see how it applies to trading.

You might not know this about me, but I’m a “graduate” of Chicago’s famed Second City Training Center. This is the school where all of Second City’s famous improv comedy graduates got their start before they became regulars on the main stage, and then went on to Saturday Night Live and beyond.

My first apartment in Chicago was a mere one block away from the Second City theater and on my way home from my office at the Chicago Board of Trade, I’d always pass by the theater doors and see advertisements for their training program. One day, in a fit of curiosity and inspiration, I said: “why not?” With no plan, I walked in the door, found the right person with the right information, filled out a form, ran my credit card, and just like that I was signed up to begin classes when the next training started in just a couple of weeks!

It was as if a spirit had possessed me and dragged me through those doors. When I walked back outside and was hit with the typical frigid Chicago wind of early January, it suddenly hit me – I was scared! What had I done?

Executives and corporate insiders have been busy to start the week as we have another long list of Form 4 filings today.

Among them is another large purchase by Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund in the British asset management firm Janus Henderson Group $JHG.

Very high cash levels are a good thing.

Investors being scared to death is historically a net positive for stocks, not a negative.

According to BofA's Fund Manager Survey, we're near multi-decade highs for cash levels.

Take a look at those dates: