Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 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’s got all the big names and more.
It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we’re developing a separate universe for that, and we’ll be sharing it with you soon.
So, The Hall of Famers is easy.
We simply take our list of 100 names and then apply our technical filters in a way that 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.
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
Commodities have been on an absolute tear, with our Equal-Weight Commodity Index up almost 40% over the trailing year.
But ever since Q2, the vast majority of the space has been chopping sideways along with most cyclical assets.
Sounds a lot like stocks, doesn’t it? And while we’re still yet to see any major resolutions from equities, we have seen some bullish developments in the commodities market of late.
Energy asserted itself as the new leadership group with a series of major breakouts. Both crude and heating oil broke to new six-year highs, while gasoline futures completed a seven-year base.
Then there’s natural gas, which gained more than 25% during the trailing month and tested its 2014 highs just above 6.
The emerging leadership from energy comes as no surprise, as we noticed signs of relative strength last month.
Now that it’s here, what are the implications for the rest of the commodity space and global risk assets?
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Grant Hawkridge @granthawkridge
Using the S&P 500 as your investment proxy, you’re probably happy with your returns so far this year.
That's even with the 5% pullback we finally saw last week -- the first 5% pullback for the S&P 500 in 2021, and it took 229 trading days.
But the averages aren’t telling the whole story. Some stocks are going up, but most are not. We've been pounding the table about this for months already, and it's been the main theme during the first three quarters of the year.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know the current environment is an absolute mess, as the weight of the evidence continues to hang in the balance.
In this post, we’ll show you why the S&P 500 is not the stock market and the stock market is not the S&P 500.
When we analyze equities as a “market of stocks” rather than “a stock market,” it becomes clear that we're in the thick of a correction that started as early as Q1.
Here at All Star Charts, we like to call this a stealth correction!
The short puts we entered on $SPY on Monday hit our profit target today and we are out. Profit target hit in under 4 trading days. We’ll take it!
Meanwhile, the $FCX Bullish Risk Reversal we entered yesterday has quickly moved in our direction.
I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’m going to take this opportunity to remove the risk from the trade.
For details on the trade, you can review it here. In short, we sold naked short puts to pay for the cost of our long calls. Thanks to today’s move, we’re able to sell some of our calls to pay for closing our entire naked short puts position. And we did that today…
During today's internal Analyst Call, JC asked me what I was looking at for a trade today.
I mentioned I hadn't fully fleshed it out yet, but whatever I did would likely involve selling premium. With the $VIX hovering around 24 at the time, it felt like the edge was on the side of the premium sellers.
At this point, Steve Strazza piped in that he liked Freeport McMoran $FCX as a likely candidate for a bounce here. And then JC got excited about the idea of a bullish Risk Reversal spread to express this idea.
Selling elevated puts premium to offset the cost of a long call position? Yes... I liked the sound of that.
Key Takeaway: The risks associated with excessive optimism are no longer present as bulls are in full retreat. Recent spikes in volatility and downside pressure on price have ushered in an atmosphere of caution.Though we haven’t reached levels of fear or pessimism indicative of a complete unwind, active equity managers reducing their exposure to 55% and the II bull-bear spread at its lowest level since May 2020 speaks to a healthy reset. Relentless equity ETF inflows, elevated valuations, and slowing earnings growth all point to increased risks over longer timeframes. However, we are seeing early signs of opportunity re-entering the market from a tactical and cyclical perspective.
Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Fade the flows
From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley
We held our October Monthly Strategy Session last night. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.
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.