You're finally seeing some of that defensive rotation with Utilities representing the only sector that is hitting new 6-month highs this week.

Here is a chart of Utilities relative to the S&P500, overlaid with Staples relative to S&Ps as well.

As you can see, both of these lines had been falling since 2022, because it's been a bull market.

But now that stocks have been correcting this year, you're seeing that outperformance coming from the most defensive sectors:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Junior International Hall of Famers.

With the goal of finding more bullish setups, we have decided to expand one of our favorite scans and broaden our regular coverage of the largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

This scan is composed of the next 100 largest stocks by market cap, those that come after the top 100 and are thus covered by the International Hall of Famers universe.

Many of these names will someday graduate and join our original International Hall Of Famers list. The idea here is to catch these big trends as early on as possible.

Let's dive right in and check out what these future big boys are up to.

This is our Junior International Hall of Famers list:

Click table to enlarge view

Island Reversals are few and far between. They don't show up very often.

But when they do....look out!

Here's Meta, the parent company of Faceplant, I mean Facebook, losing a few hundred billion dollars in value since yesterday's close.

I'll say that again, "Losing a few hundred billion dollars in value"....overnight!

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The only insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by William C. Rhodes.

Rhodes reported the acquisition of 50,000 shares of Regions Financial Corporation $RF at a total cost of approximately $1 million.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

As most of you know, we use 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...

This is the video recording of the April 24, 2024, Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Atlas Venture Opportunity Fund.

The hedge fund reported the acquisition of 17,857 shares of Korro Bio Inc $KRRO, equivalent to roughly $1 million.

Stock prices don't move based on "fundamentals".

Prices move based on positioning.

When investors are primarily on one side of a market, the pendulum swings to the other extreme.

One of my heroes John Roque said it best, "We're not in a reversion TO the mean business, we're in a reversion BEYOND the mean business".

In other words, from extremes in positioning, the market doesn't just go back to the average positioning. It tends to continue towards the other extreme.

This is the situation we currently find ourselves in as investors.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Cormorant Asset Management LP.

The hedge fund reported a purchase of $10.4 million in EyePoint Pharmaceuticals Inc $EYPT.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The Minor Leaguers.

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 now, 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 new highs in order to...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza and Alfonso Depablos

The most significant insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Farhad A. Nanji, founder of MFN Partners Management LP.

Nanji reported an additional purchase of $24 million in RXO Inc $RXO.

As we've discussed here plenty, this year is very different than last year.

Remember in 2023 when breakouts would stick and prices of stocks and ETFs would keep heading higher?

That's not happening these days.

It's actually been the opposite.

The bigger question for me is whether these new trends are here to stay, or if at some point the stock market reverts to those longer underlying uptrends that got us here.

Another question I have is which mining companies are going to lead their groups as metals continue to make new highs.

Here's a good way to view it. This is Gold breaking out of a decade+ long base to new all-time highs, resuming its secular uptrend from the 2000s.