From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Mother's Day!

$SPY was unable to hold on to the 412 area. We drifted lower all morning. 

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Dividend Aristocrats are easily some of the most desirable investments on Wall Street. These are the names that have increased dividends for at least 25 years, providing steadily increasing income to long-term-minded shareholders.

As you can imagine, the companies making up this prestigious list are some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Coca-Cola, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson are just a few of the household names making the cut.

Here at All Star Charts, we like to stay ahead of the curve. That's why we're turning our attention to the future aristocrats. In an effort to seek out the next generation of the cream-of-the-crop dividend plays, we're curating a list of stocks that have raised their payouts every year for five to nine years.

We call them the Young Aristocrats, and the idea is that these are "stocks that pay you to make money." Imagine if years of consistent dividend growth and high momentum and relative strength had a baby, leaving you with the best of the emerging dividend giants that are outperforming the averages.

By adding our technical analysis to the mix, the Young...

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

The largest insider transaction on today’s Hot List is a Form 4 filing by the co-founder of Coinbase $COIN, Fred Ehrsam.

Ehrsam revealed the purchase of 810,000 shares of COIN, equivalent to $50 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This sideways action in the market is tiring.

We do find setups, but I haven't been enthused with most of them.

These are the registration details for our Live Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our Live Call will be held on Tuesday May 16th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was Chop City for the market today.

It will likely pick a direction soon. 

Bonds are catching a bid as a risk-off tone plays across the market. 

Aside from intraday knee-jerks in price, not much has changed. Rates and the US dollar remain range-bound. US Treasuries have yet to provide a definitive buy signal.

And the S&P 500 continues to contend with overhead supply at the 4,200 level.

It’s a chop fest.

But one data point has changed in recent sessions – the probability of a rate cut or a rate hike next month based on the fed funds futures…

Check out last Thursday’s probabilities after the FOMC raised the overnight rate by 25 basis points:

The futures market was pricing an 8.9% chance of a rate cut in June with a 91.1% chance of a pause in the hiking cycle.

Today, the conviction of a pause has only strengthened since the April CPI data release (now 98.5%).

Here’s a look at the probabilities after the April CPI print...

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

Small-cap stocks are back down to where they bottomed out last summer.

Can they do it again?

I believe they can, and that's the bet that we're making.

Check out: It's Now Or Never and also We're Buying Small-caps

Here's what the Russell2000 Index ETF looks like:

The largest insider transaction on today’s Hot List is a Form 4 filing by Pulse Biosciences $PLSE director Robert W. Duggan.

Duggan reported a purchase worth roughly $65 million in PLSE.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It's just like Tuesday...

With PPI coming up at 8:30 a.m. ET, I'm going to hold off on sharing ideas until I see how the market reacts.

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

What a day...

$SPY came close to the 415 level I mentioned this morning and then traded below 410.

The recovery was quick due to tech bouncing.

[9/7: updated stop to 180. We're already #FreeRiding, so whatever we sell for is pure profit!]

It's time for the small caps to make a stand. The time is now. If they don't, it could be 'goodnight' for a long time.

JC posted earlier this week about the Russell 200 index and had this to say:

We’re back to a key level of interest for Small-caps on an absolute basis. And we’re back down to historic levels relative to Large-caps. The chart tells a very powerful story.

I’m a buyer down here.

If the Russell2000 is above last Summer’s lows, I will be long the $IWM ETF. I also think there will be plenty of opportunities this summer in small-cap stocks.

We talked about $IWM internally this morning and I suggested a good, levered way to play this thesis while honoring a nearby risk management level that will get us out of the trade without much pain if we're wrong.

But first, here's the chart of $IWM:

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

The largest insider transaction on today’s Hot List is a Form 4 filing by Enviva Inc $EVA director John Bumgarner Jr.

Bumgarner reported a purchase worth roughly $1.8 million in EVA.