45 Investing Insights to Celebrate Schaeffer's 45th Anniversary

Subscribers to our Substack, The Contrarian Edge, received this commentary on Saturday, July 25.

Thursday was Schaeffer’s 45th anniversary. Founder and CEO Bernie Schaeffer started the company in a garage on the west side of Cincinnati, before the internet, ETFs, and ‘buy the dip’ were words in our vocabulary. Before options volume hit record-setting growth for six-straight years.

The best way to celebrate our anniversary isn’t with some back-patting and self-congratulatory post. We’re going to do what we always do: give retail traders the edge they needed to compete.

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Our 45th anniversary stock pick report is now available. Consider it our gift to you, for sticking with us all these years.

Below, I scoured the internet, quantitative tables, and socials to find 45 actionable stock market nuggets to unpack over the weekend.

These are 45 rapid-fire notes, with no real rhyme or reason; just 45 threads to possibly pull on, something to spark an idea.

1. SpaceX Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ:SPCX) has lost $1 trillion in market cap since peaking at $225.64 on July 16. The only other stock to lose $1 trillion in market cap value? Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), back in 2021-2022.

2. AMZN traded as low as $81 in December 2022, and has obviously made that up and then some.

3. SpaceX IPO performance is the top searched stock on Google Trends in the last seven days.

4. Anthropic’s IPO is rumored to be October. Here’s our recent study on broken IPOs.

5. Speaking of drawdowns, AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) and Rocket Lab (RKLB) have shed MORE THAN 50% off their respective May highs. Space, meet ground.

6. 11.02. That’s the 10-day put/call volume ratio of Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLI), despite a 15% year-to-date gain. Caterpillar (CAT) is XLI’s top holding.

7. Other ETFs with a notable put skew? iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) and iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF (NYSEARCA:IYR), with respective 10-day p/c ratios of 7.38 and 7.80. Those ratios are in the 99th and 85th percentile.

8. CAT, meanwhile, closed below its 80-day moving average on July 20 for the first time since May 2025. But it is the best-performing Dow stock in 2026, up 55%.

1. Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ:COIN) thanks to a mid-week pop, crossed over its 50-day moving average. The 10 prior signals have averaged a 10.9% return and 60% win rate.

1. Carnival Corporation Ltd (NYSE:CCL) is testing its 24-month moving average, and the previous five tests in the last decade have averaged a 17.6% return and 80% win rate.

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