Here's the replay and chartbook from the May 8 Weekly Strategy Session.

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In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Adjustment to XLC position.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

As the Everything Company, it's appropriate Amazon's earnings will have something for everyone. 

Want some insight into impact of trade tension on consumer spending? Amazon's got you. Shipping? Amazon can tell you more than UPS did. Tariffs, IT spending, the impact of Chinese trade on drone delivery? Check, check, check. Amazon promised to invest heavily wherever it saw an opportunity when the company went public nearly 30yrs ago and the company has absolutely lived up to its word.

Amazon has gone from a bookseller to a stealthy Club Store (Amazon Prime has over 200 million members and generates $40 billion a year) to a movie streaming service. The company is taking over the production of Thursday Night Football, making it a nascent television network and movie studio. Presumably, to aid in the streaming of all this content this week Amazon launched the first of what will be 3200 satellites for high-speed internet. Naturally, Amazon used founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket company for deployment. 

And people thought he just started that company for celebrity near-space tourism.

Amazon gives good conference call (long answers, insanely smart...

Regional bank insiders continue to buy their own stock.

📌 Burke & Herbert $BHRB – Multiple directors teamed up for a $212,000 purchase, their second round in a week.

📌 NBT Bancorp $NBTB – Director Heidi Hoeller grabbed $110,000 worth, another vote of confidence in the regional-bank patch.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 30, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 Perpetua Resources $PPTA – Encompass Capital filed an initial 13G reporting a 5.03% stake in the Idaho-based miner.

Visa $V delivered a clean double beat this quarter, and the market loved it.

They reported $2.76 EPS on $9.59B in revenue, but the price action really tells the story.

The stock initially fell by 3% at yesterday's open...

But the buyers stepped in and ripped the price higher the rest of the day, printing a bullish engulfing candlestick and reclaiming the VWAP anchored to the all-time high. 

That’s a powerful combination of strength: solid fundamentals and a clear sign of institutional support.

This isn’t just a bounce, it’s a reclaim of leadership.

After months of drifting lower, Visa bulls are suddenly back in the driver's seat. 

The setup looks clean, the trend wants higher, and the bulls have the ball.

So what else did we learn from yesterday's earnings reactions? Let’s dive into the details.

*Click the image to enlarge it

Trane Technologies $TT had the best reaction score after...

Today's number is... -0.87%

Out of the seven global regions I track, only one showed a negative return in April, the United States, which was down -0.87%.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The red bars show the April performance for each of the seven global regions
• The blue bars show the year-to-date performance for each of the seven global regions

The Takeaway: The United States has been the last place that you wanted to be invested in this year. And the data shows this. 

The global shift in leadership is starting to take hold in 2025.

Money moves to where it's treated the best, and right now, that's not in the United States.

This is what we call global rotation.

Yet many people overlook the opportunities it presents due to their biases toward their home country or simply because they are unaware of it.

In April, only one of the seven regions I track showed a decline: the United States, which was down -0.87%. 

And the United States is the only region with...

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Just a few weeks ago, Tech looked like dead weight — it was the main culprit behind the recent market correction and was on the verge of completing a massive top.

But fast forward to today, and the picture looks very different.

Price briefly broke below a critical support zone, only to snap back with force as buyers stepped in exactly where they needed to — trapping the bears and flipping the narrative.

Now, XLK has reclaimed the VWAP anchored to the all-time highs.

That’s the equivalent key level that the major indexes are fighting with right now...

In the spring of 1998, I was six months into my first job out of college—a mutual fund and insurance salesman for MetLife. The people were kind, and my boss was supportive, but it was a terrible fit for a 22-year-old fresh out of school. Nobody wants financial advice from a kid who, not long before, was slinging pizzas and wings for barely more than minimum wage.

So when my father offered me a chance to move in with him in Tampa, Florida, and look for new opportunities, I glanced out the window at the grey Buffalo skies and didn’t hesitate. Sunshine and a fresh start sounded like the only logical move. Less than a week later, I was on the road.

The first job I landed in Tampa was with what could generously be described as a pseudo-boiler room. We weren’t cold-calling doctors and lawyers with high-pressure penny stock pitches, but we were dialing other stockbrokers and trying to convince them to pump those same junk names to their clients. One step removed from the end-sucker. I was young, naïve—or rather, stupid.

Three months in, barely making any money, it became clear the whole operation was a scam and we were being taken advantage of.

With four of the Magnificent 7s reporting earnings the next two days, big tech is front and center.

I’m talking about the largest and most important companies in the world.

These mega cap growth stocks have grown so massive that they do most of the driving when it comes to the performance of the major averages.

The S&P 500 won’t be in a bull market if too many of the stocks in the trillion-dollar club are in downtrends. It’s just math.

Alternatively, the S&P is going to look great if Microsoft, Meta, and friends are in uptrends… even if market internals are weak beneath the surface. 

The bottom line is that when it comes to the US stock market, these are the heavyweights. You can’t have a bull market without them.

The Mag 7s currently make up over 30% of the S&P 500 and more than 40% of the Nasdaq 100.

The three largest - Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia - are all tech stocks. So it stands to reason that...

Thanks to everyone who joined us for today's Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

Sorry for the obnoxious title. Sometimes, these things just write themselves.

You would think that a company involved in sports betting would be doing well, considering it seems I can't escape the barrage of advertising for sports betting apps I'm seeing everywhere I turn.

Apparently, there is a company in this space that can't seem to figure it out. Or at least, that's what their stock price action is saying. 

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

In this scan, we look to identify 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 their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in XLP.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

After weeks of increased volatility, bank insiders are voting with their wallets — four buys in one day across the regionals.

📌 Texas Capital $TCBI – Director Robert W. Stallings reported a purchase worth $339,000, his second big buy this month.

📌 PNC Financial $PNC – Director Martin Pfinsgraff bought 1,000 shares, equivalent to $158,220.

📌 Burke & Herbert $BHRB – Director Mark Guthrie Anderson dropped $159,000 into the Virginia lender.

📌 Banc of California $BANC – Director James A. Barker bought $131,560 worth of stock.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 29, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 Chief Medical Officer Samit Hirawat filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase of 4,250 shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb $BMY.

Any insider purchase at a pharma giant trading near multi-year...

Teradyne $TER crushed expectations with another double beat this quarter.

They reported revenues of $699 million and EPS of $0.75, comfortably above Wall Street estimates.

But instead of celebrating, investors hit the sell button. 

The stock dropped over 5% intraday, continuing a painful trend: Teradyne has been punished after 8 of its last 9 earnings reports.

That’s not a fluke... It’s a pattern.

Despite consistent performance, the market keeps fading the stock. 

Whether it’s concerns over cyclicality in the semiconductor space, cautious guidance, or a lack of enthusiasm for old-school chip equipment names, the stock can’t catch a break.

This kind of reaction reminds us: earnings aren’t just about the numbers. 

They’re about the market's reaction, and nobody is buying Teradyne for its earnings reports. 

They haven't for years!

So what else did we learn from yesterday's earnings reactions? Let’s dive into the details.

*Click the image to enlarge it

SBA...

It wasn't the numbers that cooked shares of Starbucks after hours last night. Not that Starbucks didn't turn in a "disappointing" (their words) quarter last night. They did. But the stock was hanging in there just fine well into last night's call. China comps were flat(!), The US was weak but not a disaster and the rest of the world comped positively. Margins were a trainwreck. EPS wasn't even close to estimates, but Starbucks pulled guidance over 6mo ago. No one owned Starbucks for last night's EPS.

What killed $SBUX (or at least sent shares from flat to down ~8%) was Starbucks shifting spending plans from machinery to labor. Under prior management, Starbucks was somewhat obsessed with rolling out Machines and Food, committing to spending $450 million on machinery starting in 2022. Say goodbye to the cold brew systems and elaborate food prep systems. Only heavy-traffic drive-thru-based stores were getting the elaborate coffee-making systems.

Niccol, who seemed confident if a little disdainful of prior initiatives he's now having to unwind, is young(er) blood but old school. He's spending on employees. Not throwing money at them but absolutely spending more on labor...

We're seeing leadership broaden across sectors, with technology starting to take a back seat. This shift comes as many of the dominant trends from the past decade begin to show signs of fatigue.

International stocks are now outpacing their U.S. counterparts.

The dollar weakened alongside equities during the most recent correction.

And value is starting to challenge growth in a meaningful way.

In the sector space, this theme continues—technology is struggling to gain relative traction against financials, classic proxies for growth and value, respectively.

We could be entering a new leadership regime — and that’s exactly the kind of shift Kenny’s VWAP setup thrives on.

In the chaos of earnings season, Kenny’s not just keeping up — he’s locking in monster trades using one simple VWAP signal. If you missed the live session, no worries — the full playbook is still available, but only until Wednesday.

...

Today's number is... -8.0%

The average global market is only in a -8.0% drawdown, while the average S&P 500 stock is in a -19.6% drawdown.

Here’s the chart:

 Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The black line shows the average S&P 500 stock 52-week drawdown.
• The blue line shows the average global market 52-week drawdown.

The Takeaway: I first pointed out a possible shift in leadership from the US to the rest of the world back in March. This was confirmed by the relative ratio of...

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For years, Momentum was basically code for US growth, big tech and high-flyers. But 2025 is rewriting that script.

This year has been all about international equities.

While US indexes have chopped sideways, many global ETFs are quietly making new 52-week highs relative to the S&P 500.

The Intl Momentum Factor ETF $IMTM tells the story of what's been unfolding in abroad and where the strength is emerging.

The ETF is breaking out to new all-time highs, driven by Financials and Industrials, which make up 34% and 18% of the...