There’s been a lot of buzz about the dwindling likelihood of a Twitter $TWTR-Elon Musk tie-up this week.

As Musk’s team has reportedly cut off deal discussions around funding, the talking heads are telling us what price has been suggesting for months now: It’s not happening.

We were just talking about how we liked the strength from Baker Bros. Advisors’ largest holding, Seagen $SGEN, during yesterday’s weekly in-house analysts’ call.

This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that Merck & Co. $MRK is in advanced discussions to acquire the cancer biotech for $40 billion.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Energy has been the clear leader in 2022. The sector posted a record-setting start to the year, even as the broader market sold off. 

Whether it's our Inside Scoop universe or any other scan, we’ve gotten used to leaning on the strongest stocks in the oil field for long exposure.

As participation narrowed for US stocks throughout the second quarter, we cautioned that energy had become an easy target and was vulnerable to catching lower with the broader market.

About a month ago, that happened as bears finally came for energy. In a matter of weeks, much of this year’s progress came undone, and so did a handful of our stops.

While there has certainly been short-term technical damage, the primary trends are intact. And while these stocks have been hit hard over the trailing month, there's little evidence that they're done being leaders over longer time frames.

Once this corrective action passes, we expect energy stocks to resume higher and offer plenty of bullish opportunities. But in the meantime, they are susceptible to deeper drawdowns and increased selling pressure.

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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...

This is the video recording of our July 6, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Bullish setups are hard to come by these days.

While this makes things more challenging in terms of finding opportunities, it also makes those opportunities stand out that much more.

If you’re showing relative strength in the current market environment, we’re sitting up and paying attention.

One of these rare leaders popped up in our Inside Scoop scan this week. Let’s talk about it.

Today's most significant insider transaction report is another Form 4 filing by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A.

Buffet continues to build his position in Occidental Petroleum $OXY, as he disclosed an additional purchase of roughly $582 million.

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 their...

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...

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:

• Our macro universe struggled this week as 77% of our list closed lower with a median return of -1.60%.
• Lumer $LB was the big winner this week, booking a 7.95% gain.
• The biggest loser was the US 10-Year Yield $TNX, which fell about 24 basis points on the week.
• There was a 2% improvement in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 4%.
• 9% of our macro list made fresh 4-week...

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.

Equites Suggest Rates Roll

It’s not just commodities and the bond market that are disagreeing with the action from yields these days. We're not getting confirmation from the stock market either. The Equities For Rising Rates ETF (EQRR) always offers excellent information to either support or contradict what we’re seeing from the bond market. When we overlay EQRR with the US 10-Year Yield (TNX), they look almost identical.

What this chart tells us is that the stocks that tend to do well in a rising rate environment could not hold their former highs and are now stuck below overhead supply. This lack of confirmation supports our outlook for a pause and some corrective action from yields in the near future.