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 Kimmy Sokoloff

I pointed out in the Live Trading Room how the market might pop first thing in the morning then flatline.

It did just that.

The most significant transaction on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by White Mountains Insurance Group LTD, who revealed a purchase of $59.1 million in MediaAlpha Inc $MAX.

White Mountains increased its ownership stake in MAX to 37.50%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Fourth of July!

After Friday's big gap up, the market is kind of flat this morning.

As investors, the first step in deciding whether to buy something or not is to identify the direction in which price is heading.

So many investors out there choose to skip this step.

I never understood that.

We know for a fact that asset prices trend. We know. We all have the data. It's just a fact.

So if we know that, then why wouldn't we begin our process by identifying which direction price is heading?

"Should we buy this stock?"

Well, is it going up in price? Down? Or sideways?

Trend recognition is also really helpful in identifying the type of market environment we're in.

"Are the majority of stocks going up? Down? Or sideways?"

At the end of every month we get a ...

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

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

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

Here’s this week’s list:

Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. 

Then...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw some big gaps for the indices all around today.

It's hard to take trades when it's like this, as the move in most stocks came overnight.

Today’s Hot List is a short one.

Pierce Norton, the president and CEO of ONEOK Inc $OKE, filed a Form 4 revealing a purchase of the oil and gas stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Fourth of July weekend!

Monday is an early close for the market, and today is month-end, quarter-end, and options expiration. $SPY is right into the gap I spoke about all week at 438.97.

Let's see how its holds today.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a very mixed market today, with a lot of weakness.

$DIA and $IWM led the pack.

The most significant transaction on today's list comes in a Form 4 filing by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett just bought an additional 2,138,250 shares in Occidental Petroleum Corp $OXY. This is his first purchase in almost a month.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I mentioned yesterday in the Live Trading Room that $SPY can head into its gap at 438.97 this week.

The market is happy because all banks passed their stress tests.