We debuted a new scan recently which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us towards the very best stocks in the market. We have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base this time around. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.

The largest insider buy on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Jan Barta of Pale Fire Capital.

Barta revealed an additional purchase of roughly $5.3 million in Groupon $GRPN as he continues to increase his position in the stock.

For this week's trade, we're buying a $CVX October 180/200 Bull Call Spread for approximately $6.50 here. This means we're long the 180 calls and short an equal amount of the 200 calls for a net debit.

Get the full details, risk management procedures and targets for this trade here:

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 May 25, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Fear and concern are at the tip of every investor's tongue, yet their eyes remain on the market. For all the pessimism suggested by sentiment surveys, there’s still a great deal of hope as the desperate search for the bottom continues. Yes, put call ratios are on the rise but that’s mostly driven by falling call activity as last year’s speculative exuberance evaporates. Also, investors continue to favor equities over more defensive assets such as bonds and cash despite what they say. Caution remains warranted until attitudes change or market participants are forced to avert their gaze out of disgust. After we see evidence of improved price action (and likely a series of breadth thrusts), accumulated pessimism becomes fuel for a rally, but the timing of that turn is anybody’s guess at this point.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Contrarian Positioning Is To Go Long Bonds

With all the focus on sentiment indicators, it seems like being a contrarian right now is all the...

Back on February 2nd, we initiated a long-term bullish bet in Chevron $CVX January 2024 150-strike calls. You can read all about our thinking at the time here. In short, we were of the belief that a big breakout in the energy sector was appearing likely.

As you can see from this updated chart, our bet proved to be prescient. We've already taken back our original risk capital in this trade when we sold half of our position on March 2 at double what we originally paid. That has given us the super power to continue holding the remaining half position until now, achieving more gains.

While we still continue to our remaining January 2024 calls, the chart action suggests to us that another leg higher in $CVX may be imminent. And with the big round number price level -- $200 -- dangling above, we think there's an opportunity to make an additional tactical bet to augment our current gains in this position.

We're making an adjustment to an existing position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

Yesterday, Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management filed a 13D revealing the purchase of an additional 16 million shares of the fast food chain, Wendy's $WEN.

This brings Trian’s total interest to just shy of 20%.

Buried in the footnotes of the filing, Trian also disclosed that it advised the board of directors it’s exploring a potential transaction.

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

In yesterday's note, we made a brief argument for caution.

Today, I want to add some further context and discuss one of the difficulties involved with trading in a tape as messy as this.

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US dollar is front and center as risk assets hang in the balance.

Earlier in the month, we placed the Australian and Canadian dollars on breakdown alert as they completed major topping patterns.

US dollar strength was expanding at the time, and the AUD and CAD were the last dominos to fall.

Or so it seemed.

What started as strong downside resolutions for these top commodity currencies quickly turned into potential failed breakdowns.

Now that the most resilient currencies are snapping back against King Dollar, it's compromising the broad US dollar rally and could usher in a more favorable environment for risk assets. 

Let’s discuss what it means for stocks and commodities if these failed breakdowns resolve higher.

Here’s a chart highlighting the recent action in the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar futures:

Two weeks ago, these top commodity...

I heard a good one this morning:

Where do Traders go for Drinks?

An Outside Bar!

haha

Hat tip to Sean for that one.

Anyway, how are you enjoying what is historically the worst part of the 4-year cycle?

Some tools and some strategies work great in certain market environments but terribly in others.

The range can include the following: looking for bearish breadth divergences at the start of bull markets; using a long-term moving average as an entry in a sideways market environment; or even something as fundamental as deciding how to approach tactical trading opportunities.

In the case of today's crypto market, a big mistake would be to directionally trade Bitcoin when no real direction has been ascertained.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

They are cracks more than crevices at this point, but the fissures are there. And they are becoming more widespread. Signs of financial (and economic) stress are on the rise. While generally still at historically low levels, they merit watchful attention as the Fed moves forward with an accelerated program of interest rate hikes.

Evidence of stress is emerging across the fixed income landscape: high yield spreads are rising, corporate bond yields have the most upside momentum since the financial crisis and mortgage rates are at their highest levels in over a decade.

We are already seeing the implications of this in the housing market. New single-family home sales have fallen 20% over the past year while homes for sale have surged 35%.

As stresses continue to build, we could see renewed interest in traditional safe haven assets (especially Treasury Bonds). Whether this period ends up being labeled a recession (formal or otherwise) is an open question. But the data increasingly point to a meaningful deterioration in economic conditions.

...

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Winder Investment, which reported an additional $1.8 million purchase in Sensient Technologies $SXT.

The firm now owns more than 6 million shares, representing a 12.4% ownership interest in the specialty chemicals stock.

As the market continues to churn sideways, certain stocks are putting their head out of the water and making a move.

Today we're looking at a Fertilizer stock that looks interesting.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

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.

They’re doing so for one reason only: because they think the stock is about to...

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.

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

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.

The way we did this is simple…

To make the cut for our new 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...