From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to our latest Under The Hood columne, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended September 16, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our Minor Leaguers column.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Watch this video for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

New Lows for Big Tech

When it comes to the most important stocks, it’s all about tech. Mega cap technology companies dominate the US indexes and are in just about everyone's portfolio. The chart below illustrates just how paramount their performance is for the broader market. We have overlaid the relative trend between technology stocks and the S&P 500 with the Nasdaq 100 on absolute terms.

While the chart shows less than a year of data, the correlation between the two is consistently strong throughout all of history. This makes perfect sense as technology stocks represent roughly half of the weighting in the Nasdaq. Not only did we see new lows in a growing number of large cap tech stocks last week, but the group also made new 52-week relative lows at the index level. This kind of relative weakness tells us we should expect further downside for the market’s largest stocks. If that’s the case, the major...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was negative, as 89% of our list closed lower with a median return of -2.90%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the winner, closing with a 15.40% gain.
• The biggest loser was Dow Jones Transports $DJT, with a weekly loss of -8.79%.
• There was a 3% drop in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 11% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs....

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by two members of the Starbucks $SBUX board of directors, chair Mellody Hobson and member Richard Allison.

They reported purchases of SBUX worth a combined $5.9 million.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs. We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

...

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes from Sarepta Therapeutics $SRPT Director Michael Andrew Chambers.

Chambers reported the acquisition of roughly 57,100 shares, equivalent to $5.9 million.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Although volatility has returned to equity markets this week, we continue to see pockets of strength in a variety of areas and individual stocks from our Inside Scoop universe.

While many of the strongest names continue to struggle in terms of breaking out and sustaining new highs, just as many are showing impressive resilience despite the broad market weakness.

Here we’ll outline a trade setup in a small-cap stock that’s coiling near fresh highs.

In lieu of this week’s Strategy Session, we’ll also run through some of the names from our Inside Scoop universe that stand out.

H Partners Management filed a Form 4 reporting the purchase of roughly $4.6 million in the theme parks corporation Six Flags Entertainment $SIX.

The hedge fund now has a total stake in SIX of more than 11.50%.

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.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey...

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Sameer Gandhi, a director at Freshworks $FRSH.

Gandhi reported a purchase of FRSH stock worth $11.5 million.

The most significant insider activity on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by Kelcy Warren, the executive chairman of Energy Transfer $ET.

Warren reported a purchase worth roughly $29.2 million.

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.

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, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to...