Gauge Emerging Large-Cap Leadership With This Stock Market Screen

Stock market leadership continues to broaden. Take a look at airline stocks, which were among the top gainers during Wednesday’s pre-Thanksgiving rally, while money continued to flow out of large-cap technology names like Meta Platforms (META) and Oracle (ORCL). More recently, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) have come under selling pressure.

One way to monitor the liquid, large-cap leadership in the stock market is with the IBD Big Cap 20 screen, which is updated electronically every day at Investors.com. It’s located in the Stock Lists tab found along the top of the homepage. And the two common traits of large caps found in the screen each day? They tend to have the best fundamentals in their industry groups. They’re also the best price performers.

Click on a column header to sort the screen as you like. The screen is continuously updated throughout the day, so it makes sense to try a sort by the top percentage gainers. Or you can see which stocks are seeing the heaviest increases in trading volume.

Stock Market Leadership

Leading health care stocks have started to find a home in the Big Cap 20, including Eli Lilly (LLY), which has made an astounding move since its Oct. 30 earnings report. The next meaningful pullback for the stock market will most likely give the next entry point for Lilly, but it really depends on the nature of the pullback. A logical support level would be the stock’s 21-day line, which resides just below the 1,000 level and just above Lilly’s last buy area from a long consolidation.

Medpace (MEDP), meanwhile, is another fundamental and technical giant after reporting bullish earnings on Oct. 22. Post-earnings, the stock moved sideways and held support at its 21-day moving average. Then it jumped in heavy volume on Nov. 24.

It’s been pulling back in light volume and a 625 entry is still in play. As a provider of outsourced clinical development services for biotech and pharmaceutical firms, Medpace is also known as a contract research organization.

Intuitive Surgical Sets Up

Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), which makes the Da Vinci robotic surgical system, also gapped up after reporting earnings and revenue growth that accelerated from the second quarter. The stock rallied sharply the next day, then it drifted lower and formed a perfect handle.

It broke out and cleared the handle on Nov. 7, then quickly pulled back to its 21-day line. But it held support and now it’s trying to clear an alternate handle entry of 580.47.

There’s still some good tech representation in the Big Cap 20, all with some artificial intelligence flavor. Palantir (PLTR) still made the cut as of Wednesday’s close, despite a sharp drop through its 10-week line recently.

Despite a weak technical picture at the moment, Palantir still maintains a high Relative Strength Rating because shares were still up 119% year to date through Wednesday. And the software giant is still delivering huge earnings and revenue growth, with strong growth prospects ahead.

Follow Ken Shreve on X @IBD_KShreve for more stock market analysis and insight.

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