From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Yesterday, the $SPX pushed its way through the 50-day moving average at 3,860, then reversed course to close below it.

I mentioned this is a resistance level where the market might need a breather.

We got a new Form 13D from our favorite corporate raider yesterday, as Carl Icahn revealed  an increased ownership stake in Southwest Gas $SWX.

Icahn now owns 9.8% of outstanding shares, a very slight uptick from the 9.7% he reported on September 7.

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 journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Tech did not lead the way higher.

And the indices still chugged along.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

Stocks are back in bear market rally mode for the second time since this summer!

Whether this is the beginning of a new bull market is something we can only know in hindsight. 

Fortunately, defining the current rally appropriately is not a prerequisite for participating in it. And the latter is all we’re worried about.

We want to position ourselves in the strongest stocks from the strongest groups and use them as vehicles to benefit from the counter-trend move that's underway.

We discussed this in more detail on today’s Strategy Session. Click here to review the recording and the chartbook.

Now, let’s dive in and check out some of our favorite setups from our Inside Scoop universe.

This is the video recording of our October 26, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

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.

This week we're looking at the stock from the capital goods sector. Stocks from his sector continue to show strength in a consolidation type of market setup.

This is still the one folks.

I've been in the camp that we're only getting bull markets in stocks around here if the Dollar is falling.

And well, a funny thing happened last month: The Dollar started falling, particularly against the most important crosses.

This happened once the journalists finally realized the Dollar had been so strong. And you know what tends to happen when they finally get the memo ;)

Take a look at the Dollar rolling over vs both the Euro and British Pounds:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Two heavy hitters, $GOOGL and $MSFT, reported last night, and they both traded lower after hours.

Futures seem to be holding steady.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by the Swiss investment company BB Biotech AG.

The biotechnology-focused fund reported a purchase worth roughly $2.2 million in MacroGenics $MGNX.

Many stocks are no where near their all-time highs.

The S&P500 still needs to rally 25% just to get back to its former highs. And that's after the 10% rally that we've already seen in October.

The Nasdaq100 would need to go up another 43% from here just to get back to its highs. And again, that's after it already ripped 12% off its lows this month.

Remember, the average Nasdaq stock fell 44% from its highs during the bear market. The average small & micro cap stock dropped about 50%.

And since most stocks are so far from their highs, investors are having a hard time calling this a bull market.

"They need to make new all-time highs for it to be a bull market", they say to me.

So ok, let's play that game.

None of these prices here below were new all-time highs. So was this a bear market then?