From the Desk of Steve Strazza

With the stock market trading sideways for the past two months, we’re still finding pockets of strength and individual names that offer favorable risk-reward opportunities.

While we do want to be more selective through this corrective phase, we also don’t want to miss anything. The bull market is still alive and well. This kind of sector rotation and digestion of gains is nothing out of the ordinary. While it plays its course, we want to continue to bet on leaders.

Let’s dive in and check out some of our favorite setups from our Hot Corner universe this week.

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...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Ares Management LLC.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of roughly $2.1 million in Frontier Communications Parent $FYBR.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is rallying before the August PPI print at 8:30 a.m. ET. 

There’s a gap on $SPY at 449.17 that could potentially get filled today.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

What a wacky, whippy market.

We’re stuck under resistance on $SPY at 447.14 or so.

We still have headwinds, with August PPI tomorrow and the Fed next week.

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Carl Icahn.

Icahn revealed a purchase of $7.8 million in Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We have August CPI data coming out at 8:30 a.m. ET.

I'll look for ideas after the release, as I expect volatility.

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 Monday September 18th @ 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 Monday night:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is waiting for August CPI data on Wednesday morning.

It felt like we were at a standstill.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Equities like a deadstick dollar.

But stocks can’t always get what they want – or “like.” 

A swift 5 percent gain in the US Dollar Index $DXY was not on the S&P 500’s wish list.

Yet that’s what the dollar served up following its mid-July failed breakdown. 

Unsurprisingly, stocks have struggled since, peaking less than two weeks after the dollar posted its year-to-date low.

The DXY is now challenging a critical overhead supply level as dollar bulls have once again lowered their horns.

But will they finally hook 'em by the end of the week?

We’ll know if the DXY decisively closes above 105.

That’s the level:

Meanwhile, investors and traders appear reluctant to relinquish the euro (the largest component of the US Dollar Index at 57.6% of the weighting). 

Perhaps US dollar bulls are making contact at the...

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Carl Icahn.

Icahn revealed a purchase of $7.8 million in Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We have August CPI data coming out at 8:30 a.m. ET.

I’ll look for ideas after the release, as I expect volatility.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is waiting for August CPI data on Wednesday morning.

It felt like we were at a standstill.

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Coliseum Capital Management LLC.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of ModivCare Inc $MODV shares with a total value of $6.4 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Overall, it was nice action in the markets yesterday.

We still have a gap on $SPY at 449.17.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

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...

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 Ian Culley @IanCulley

Precious metals deserve the benefit of the doubt.

These shiny rocks are in the early stages of their next secular bull run. But I won’t let my bullish bias detract from the obvious: Gold has seen brighter days.

Overhead supply dominates the charts while risk appetite cools and prices fall toward critical support levels.

Is it time to buy the dip? 

No, especially as investors focus on more attractive investments…