From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts
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'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.
Monday night we held our September Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.
In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each.
Investors navigate a market of stocks, not a “stock market.”
Equity indexes slide, and US treasuries collapse against a rapid rise in interest rates. Unfortunately for the bulls, the charts show no signs of an imminent change in these underlying trends.
That’s the environment, and there’s no use fighting it.
Have no fear: We can still lean into market areas that enjoy a rising rate environment, mainly energy.
Here’s the US 30-year yield breaking to its highest level since the summer of ‘07:
While some of these explosive rallies pause, other areas of the commodity space are forming tactical reversal patterns.
Let’s check out one of my favorites,…
Corn.
Here’s the December corn contract carving out a ten-week base:
I bought yesterday’s close above 500’0. That’s our risk level. As long as corn trades above that level, I like it long toward the July high at approximately 570’0.
However, during today's session, I was abruptly stopped out of my position.
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. 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.
Did you think inflation was just going to come and go?
Just like that? And now we all move on?
I highly doubt that it's that simple.
According to the bond market, inflationary pressures are likely just getting started.
This is a $120 Trillion asset class that's so big there's just no where to hide.
For instance, take a look at the Inflation-protected Treasury Securities, that we refer to as TIPs. And when you compare them to nominal yielding Treasury Bonds, you'll notice the new 52-week highs this week in the ratio between the two.
This is what the bond market is pricing in for inflation. Not the angry economist on the internet. Not the pretty lady on basic cable.
This is the bond market. This is whose opinion actually matters: