From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Cormorant Asset Management.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of roughly $10 million in EyePoint Pharmaceuticals $EYPT.

How's this messy market treating you?

Are you happy the market is a mess? Or do you find it frustrating?

Keep in mind, the S&P500 is still at the same price it was 2 months ago.

Both the Nasdaq100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are still at the same prices they were back in February.

We're almost half way through May.

The Technology Index, which is the largest component of the S&P500 (30%) and has the largest weighting in the Nasdaq100 (50%), is still where it was back in January.

Again we're half way through May!

Meanwhile, don't forget about the Small-cap Russell2000 that's hilariously still stuck below where it was way back in December.

The Consumer Discretionary Index and Dow Jones Transportation Average are also down for the year.

That's the market we're in.

Some people keep pretending that this year is just like last year.

But I cheated. I actually looked at the data. So I know better.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As most of you know, we use 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.

This is the video recording of the May 8, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Aon plc $AON director Lester Knight.

Knight reported a purchase of $2.7 million worth of AON shares.

Here are the returns of a series of country ETFs since October.

Notice how the ones from the U.S. are further down the list than you might expect.

At the top you've got Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Mexico:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Sensata Technologies Holding plc $ST director John Mirshekari.

Mirshekari reported a purchase of ST shares with a total value of $10.6 million.

The Small-cap Indexes in America have had a tough time for a while now.

Since the start of 2022, both of these Small-cap Indexes have actually produced a negative return.

The S&P600 Small-cap Index requires companies to have a track record of earnings in order to be included in the index.

The Russell2000 lets anyone in. It doesn't matter how much money you lose, if your market cap is above $300 Million, then you're in.

Both of them have been terrible.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today's list comes via two Form 4 filings by Eli Samaha, founder and managing partner of Madison Avenue Partners LP.

Samaha and Madison Avenue reported a purchase of $13 million in Theravance Biopharma $TBPH.

It's amazing what price action can do to change sentiment.

We went from frothy optimism just a couple of months ago, to a much more pessimistic environment for investors.

This table below is a great summary of the different gauges we look at to measure sentiment and what they've done over the past month.

The blue diamonds are the current readings and the gray triangles represent where these were a month ago.

What's on your mind these days?

I'll tell you what I'm thinking about.

I'm used to a market where stocks struggle when the US Dollar are US rates are rising. And that's what we've seen all year.

And while the data certainly points to a market of stocks that have been grinding mostly sideways over the past few months, stocks haven't done nearly as bad as you'd think, considering just how strong the Dollar has been and how much rates have risen.

So the question for me is whether these consolidations are going to resolve higher or lower?

And what the implications might be....

A lower resolution here could be a massive tailwind for stocks.

Remember, during Election years, the market tends to bottom in May ahead of a very strong summer, particularly when there is an incumbent candidate.

If these resolutions are, in fact, to the downside, then that's exactly what I would expect to see happen: