Today's trade has me thinking of this classic corny joke from Pulp Fiction:
One of the strongest sectors out there right now is banking. Particularly regional banks. And as we head into year-end, the catch-up trade is real and money managers chasing alpha are looking into some beaten-up names in the regional banks to get the juice they need to make their year.
This plays in favor of today's trade which has a yawning gap to fill which is likely to overshoot on the upside if a broader market melt-up is in the cards (narrator: we think it is).
Another $73 Billion came in last week, as investors decide they would rather sit in cash collecting an inflation-adjusted, after tax profit of around 1%.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is up 50% from the October lows last year. The S&P500 is up a humble 30%.
Technology stocks are up 60%.
Bitcoin is up 160% this year.
But investors are deciding to close their eyes to the current market trends and, for some reason, hoping it goes away.
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 also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.
What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.
And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...
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.
Here’s this week’s list:
*Click table to enlarge view
We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.
Then, we sort the remaining names by their proximity to new 52-week highs.
Welcome to TheJunior International Hall of Famers.
With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.
This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.
Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.
Let's dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.
This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:
If you don't have exposure to cryptocurrency in one shape or another in your portfolio, you're missing out. But, it's not too late. In fact, we think this is the perfect time to get aggressive.
With Bitcoin above 30,000, this needs to be an area we're pressing our bets on. When this asset class gets going, nothing can stop it. And now, with all these coins successfully resolving higher out of long-term reversal patterns, we're of the stern view that now is the time to get involved.
Expect to see a lot of trade ideas out of this space in the coming months...
One such name we discussed at length in the previous cycle was Helium $HNT. In fact, as a fun experiment, the team all tried their hands at Helium mining. But as the tide turned in 2022, Helium was one of the worst-hit names in the entire asset class, falling into a whopping 98% drawdown.
Strazza will gladly tell you he has helium miners all over the Florida Keys that he no longer pays attention to. That's the right kind of sentiment we want to see at the back of a primary trend reversal.