We’ve talked a lot about the unusual options activity in commodity stocks like Freeport-McMoRan $FCX in recent weeks and months. 

Yesterday, we saw more of the same, as options traders made some major splashes in April monthly calls for both the oil services giant Schlumberger $SLB and the British integrated oil and gas name Shell Plc $SHEL.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Yesterday, we discussed one of our favorite stocks from the hot list right now and today, we have another new idea.

Before we get there though, let’s reiterate yesterday’s trade.

Durable Capital Partners continues to be active, now with an $8.5 million purchase of software company Clearwater Analytics Holdings $CWAN.

In recent weeks, the investment firm has also made filings for purchases in Duolingo $DUOL and Warby Parker $WRBY.

We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us towards the very best stocks in the market. This time around, we have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to the 2 to 100 Club.

As many of you know, something we've been working on internally is using various bottom-up tools and scans to complement our top-down approach. It's really been working for us!

One way we're doing this is by identifying 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.

Executives and corporate insiders have been busy to start the week as we have another long list of Form 4 filings today.

Among them is another large purchase by Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund in the British asset management firm Janus Henderson Group $JHG.

Very high cash levels are a good thing.

Investors being scared to death is historically a net positive for stocks, not a negative.

According to BofA's Fund Manager Survey, we're near multi-decade highs for cash levels.

Take a look at those dates:

This is the video recording of our March 16, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

The most notable names with the big gains these last two three days have been sugar stocks. And today we're going to go over a bunch of stocks that are displaying great strength and momentum at present. It's a sweet deal you guys, you're gonna wanna check it out!

Sugar stocks continue to power through and are the sweet spot of the market. They benefit from the rising ethanol price and broad strength in the agriculture produces segment.

Abdiel Capital filed a Form 4 yesterday revealing a purchase of an additional 105,500 shares in the software company Appian Corp $APPN.

The firm also made a large purchase in February in the amount of roughly $6.5 million. It now owns nearly 6 million shares of APPN, representing an ownership stake of approximately 14%.

Another software stock, Shift4 Payments $FOUR, had insider activity reported, as the chairman of the board and CEO, Jared Isaacman, filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase worth approximately $1.7 million. 

Isaacman now owns 334,742 shares of FOUR.

Price trends have been a tad bit clear in the week gone by and some of that has translated to new trade ideas. This week we're looking at a name from the Consumer Durables sector.

Let's take a look at the trade for this week!

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 $1B 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 $1B and $4B.