Ernest S. Rady, the chairman and CEO of American Assets Trust $AAT, continues to appear on our list with his eighth Form 4 filing in the trailing month.

Rady reported his latest purchase on Friday, revealing another 25,000 shares, equivalent to $719,600.

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:

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...

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by Cevian Capital.

Cevian reported an $11.4 million purchase in Autoliv $ALV, the world’s biggest manufacturer of airbags and seatbelts for cars.

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 the Hall of Famers, the 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.

Jim DeFranco, the executive vice-president of Dish Network $DISH, is on our list again today with his fifth Form 4 filing in August alone.

DeFranco, who co-founded the broadcasting company over 40 years ago, disclosed a purchase of $2.5 million in his latest filing.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

The bulls have moved back into the driver seat over the past few months, as a good deal of technical damage was repaired during the summer rally.

It appears that the weakest stocks have at least stopped falling as growth indexes have transitioned to more constructive, base-building action since late Q2. 

And, more recently, the strongest sectors during the current cycle have reclaimed key levels. 

We’re talking about materials rallying back into their old range and energy stocks resolving above a shelf of former highs. 

As both cyclical sectors are now back above our risk levels, we are looking for the strongest stocks to buy to express a bullish thesis on these groups.

When we think about the strongest stocks within materials, the coal industry and its recent resilience is top of mind.

We see no reason why the relative strength from these stocks shouldn’t continue, so let’s dive in and outline some of our favorite charts in the space.

Before we do that, here’s our equal-weight custom index, which includes the largest coal stocks listed on US exchanges:

...

This is the video recording of our August 24, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

The largest insider transaction on today's list is a Form 4 filing by H Partners Management, which reported an $11.6 million purchase in the theme park Six Flags $SIX.

The hedge fund has a total stake of 11.50% as well as a seat on the board.

The largest insider splash on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Gregory Bailey, an independent director at Biohaven Pharmaceutical $BHVN.

Bailey reported the purchase of approximately $5.6 million in his company’s stock.

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.

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 the stock is about to move in...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended August 19, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with The Minor Leaguers.

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 purchases, unusual options activity...

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 85% of our list closed lower with a median return of -1.46%.
• The Volatility Index $VIX was the winner, closing with a 5.48% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a weekly loss of -11.67%.
• There was a 2% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 11%.
• 13% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs, and 6% of our...