We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

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.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

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.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

ValueAct Partners revealed an additional purchase of roughly $10 million in Insight Enterprises $NSIT, as the activist hedge fund continues to build a position in the enterprise cloud company.

The firm now owns more than 3.8 million shares for a total ownership interest of just under 11%.

The average stock listed on the NYSE is down over 34% off its highs.

The new 52-week highs list peaked in February of last year - that was over 15 months ago!

We've now seen more stocks hitting new lows than new highs for the most consecutive weeks since the Great Financial Crisis.

The Technology, Communications and Consumer Discretionary sectors combined make up almost half of the stocks in the entire S&P500. They're each now down 26%, 33% and 35%, respectively.

In fact, almost half the stocks on the Nasdaq have seen their prices get cut in half.

And people keep asking me if we're going into a bear market?

What the hell do you call that?

If you define all that as a bull market, then I think you need to check yourself into a mental hospital.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

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, which you can check out here.

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:

The largest insider transaction on today's Hot List is a Form 4 filing by the co-founder and director of Coinbase Global $COIN, Fred Ehrsam, who reported an additional $25 million purchase of his own stock.

This is the video recording of the May 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• The average stock down 30-45% depending on the exchange
• Most consecutive weeks of more new lows than new highs since 2008
• How will US Dollar near former highs impact stocks
• Energy Stocks & Commodities at a Critical Juncture
• Major Bond Futures Contracts at Key Support: 2s, 5, 10s & 30s
• Consumer Discretionary the worst performing sector
• New Short Ideas in Growth
• Stocks Showing Relative Strength bucking the trend
• International weakness - stocks are below overhead supply
• Commercial Hedgers continue to buy Energy Futures
• Precious metals underperforming stocks and commodities
• Chilean Lithium continues to shine
• Agriculture stocks and commodities still trending higher
• A look into some recent insider transactions
• Crypto at key support levels, similar to the bond market

We debuted a new scan recently- The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our newest scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for major moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by the media holding company National Amusements, which reported a $20 million purchase of Paramount Global $PARA.

National Amusements now owns over 32 million shares of PARA, which represents an ownership stake of about 5%.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as a market of stocks.

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions… but there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club. We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports. Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.