Cathie Wood’s infamous ARK Investment Management is on our list today, as it just added more than 1 million shares of biotech stock Twist Bioscience $TWST.

The latest 13G reports an ownership interest of more than 11% in the synthetic DNA specialist.

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

The Japanese yen continues to be front and center, as the safe-haven currency can't seem to find its footing.

In a market where risk assets are struggling to catch any sort of sustained bid, finding investment opportunities in yen has been a great strategy. It continues to work.

Long USD/JPY has been one of the best trades on the sheets this year – by far! And it looks to be continuing its upward trajectory, as it hit fresh 20-year highs earlier this week.

Aside from providing a stellar trading opportunity, the current intermarket relationship between this forex cross and the bond market may reveal the near-term direction of the US 10-year yield.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s an overlay chart of the USD/JPY pair and the US 10-year yield with a 26-day correlation study in the lower pane:

These two charts have followed similar...

The largest insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filing by James A. Star, independent director at Chewy $CHWY.

Star disclosed the purchase of approximately $5 million worth of shares in the online pet retailer.

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 their journey...

This is the video recording of our June 8, 2022, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

Phillip Frost, the healthcare industry veteran and CEO of OPKO Health $OPK, is on our list again as he accumulates more shares in the pharmaceutical and diagnostics company.

Yesterday, he revealed an additional purchase of roughly $279,226 worth of his own company's stock in a Form 4.

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

The Japanese yen continues to slide.

In early April, we highlighted the multi-year base in the USD/JPY cross. We were anticipating a significant breakout based on the broad weakness in the yen.

Even gold, one of the worst performing assets, looked strong denominated in yen.

We went so far as to title the post Anything in Yen.

Funny or not, it was true.

Not long after the post, we got the breakout we expected. And, two months later, the USD/JPY is kicking off its next leg higher, printing fresh 20-year highs.

Let's take it a step further and outline some trade setups in other currencies denominated in yen.

Remember, everything and anything seems to work priced in yen these days.

First, a quick revisit of the USD/JPY chart we shared in April. Here’s the updated version:

After retesting its recent breakout level near 126, the USD/JPY pair has...

Late last week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reported the purchase of a variety of deep in-the-money call options in Apple $AAPL and Microsoft $MSFT.

The contracts expire in March and June of next year.

Over the past few years, Pelosi has made some very profitable trades using in-the-money calls in names such as Tesla $TSLA and Nvidia $NVDA.

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...

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.

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

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

The Impact of a Higher Dollar

We’ve talked a lot about the implications of a higher dollar. Long story short, it means lower prices for risk assets. This includes US stocks, commodities, and especially international stocks. They should all enjoy a tailwind if the dollar is to fail and roll over at these former highs.  

Overlaying growth stocks such as the ARK Innovation ETF with the Dollar Index gives us a nice visual of this relationship. Look at the large base in DXY that has formed since its 2020 peak. If we were to invert that DXY chart it would fit seamlessly with the distribution pattern in ARKK, shown below. The two have a very strong negative correlation. 

As the dollar has rallied since last year, ARKK and other stocks have come under increasing pressure. Along those same lines, if the dollar were to top out and start trending lower from here, wouldn’t this make for a logical level for ARKK...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was mostly red as 77% of our list closed lower with a median return of -0.85%.
• The US 10-Year Yield $TNX was the winner this week, closing with a 7.80% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB, with a weekly loss of -10.33%.
• There was a 4% gain in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 15%.
• 15% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs....