Here's a snippet that sums up a conversation I had with my Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza this morning:

Me: Any trade ideas have you excited this morning?

Steve: Nothing. New lows everywhere today.

Me: I know. It's ugly.

Steve: I can give you a handful of nice charts that are breaking out, but they are all going to fail. Can't buy breakouts in this market.

Yep. That's where we're at. Putting on directional bets in either direction feels like a high risk proposition. Long breakouts are likely to fail, while short breakdowns are likely to get caught offsides in a wicked bear market dead cat bounce.

But this doesn't mean we're out of options to earn some profits. Options premiums remain elevated across the board, and we've got some areas with clean levels of support we can use as guiderails to sell some delta-neutral premium with higher-than-normal chances of success.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

As we turn the page on another quarter in the crypto markets, we leave behind yet another period of aimless price action.

Bitcoin ended the period unchanged after giving back some of its slight gains earlier in the quarter. The leadership was outside Bitcoin, as Ethereum sported some modest gains.

Other names, like Polygon and Binance, are well above the lows achieved in the mass capitulation event in June. This came after Ethereum completed the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.

In bear markets you'll find that the majority of stocks are making lower lows and lower highs in price.

With basic arithmetic, we can call those downtrends.

Using that same math, in order for stocks to be in uptrends, they first need to stop making lower lows.

"They need to stop going down before they can start to go up", is how I learned it.

Going through my charts this weekend, I found this chart right here pretty interesting.

The last time Mid-caps, Small-caps and even Micro-caps made lower lows was almost 4 months ago:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We have the Consumer Price Index data for September coming out on Thursday morning, and we have more Fed speakers this week as as well. Expect more tough talk about inflation.

Should the $SPY break down below 360.94, we can potentially head to the lows of 357.04.

I'm monitoring the $QQQ as well to see if it touches the lows at 267.01.

The most significant insider activity on today’s list is a 13G filed by Baker Bros Advisors LP.

The hedge fund revealed an increase in ownership from 7.7% to 10.9% in the small-cap biotechnology company Rhythm Pharmaceuticals $RYTM.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

A funny thing tends to happen near the end of important trends.

The journalists finally catch on.

It's never at the beginning of trends. That's not when they get excited.

It's when everyone has finally agreed that a trend is in place, which by definition, is late in the cycle.

You see, the journalist community does an amazing job of aggregating consumer & investor sentiment. I find they are the very best at this.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

Is it a bear market or a bull market, JC?

Are you bullish or bearish, JC?

These are the wrong questions to ask, in my opinion.

They're the ones I get most often, but I think it defeats the point of what we're trying to do here.

The question I find myself asking is whether we should be spending more of our time looking for stocks to buy, spending more of our time looking for stocks to sell, or should we be on vacation doing nothing in this market?

Those are 3 real options we have as investors.

For me, I think it's worth spending our time looking for stocks to buy.

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. You can 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. ...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I love it when a pattern carries both bullish and bearish implications. It could break out or break down. Either direction works for me.

That’s the beauty of the setup. 

For traders, the directional move doesn't matter. We can prepare for both outcomes. And, lucky for us, sugar futures look ready to swing either way.

Check out the weekly continuation chart of sugar:

Sugar posted a big base breakout followed by a year-long consolidation. This chart looks similar to gasoline, crude oil, and copper – which have all broken down to retest their respective 2018 highs.

It’s reasonable to imagine sugar futures do the same. But we have to see the move before we can take action.

Here’s a daily chart of the most actively traded contract (March 2023):

...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Economic data came out this morning, which, in reality, wasn't bad. But the S&P 500 dropped 3% at its low.

As I mentioned this morning, to me the issue is oil up, bonds down posing the biggest risk to the overall market.

From the Desk of Willie Delwiche.

Apple Floats, Small-Caps Skid

The Chart: 

Many areas of the stock market have undercut their June lows. The largest company (Apple) and an ETF of small-cap stocks (IWM) stand out as exceptions. When we look over 3+ years (rather than just 3+ months) we see that small stocks are back to pre-COVID levels, while Apple has been consolidating its gains.

Why It Matters: 

The post-COVID speculative bubble in small-caps has been unwound. For Apple, the work seems hardly to have begun. Apple’s resiliency could become a liability if stocks take another leg lower and investors look again for safe havens to sell. As it stands now, Apple  is larger than 5 entire sectors in the S&P 500. Bear markets don’t usually leave anything unscathed.

We've adjusted a position in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

This is the video recording of our October 7, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a wild move yesterday. Almost everything reversed lower.

I'd like to think this is simply just a healthy consolidation before a potential move higher for the indices.

It’s another short one today.

However, we do have some founder activity in the recreational vehicle manufacturer Thor Industries $THO.

The way I learned it was that we want to buy stocks when the journalists put a chart on the cover of a magazine.

I like to pick on The Economist because they have such a great track record of being the last ones to the party.

Here's a good run down of a few favorites and part of the reason we got so cautious last Spring.

Fast forward to today: Can we classify this one as a chart? Does this count?

The Outperformers.

The Outperformers is our custom-made scan that pinpoints the very best stocks in the market. It’s the fastest, easiest way to find quality names that are primed for significant moves.

The goal is that as the market rally progresses, the sector rotation within the market will reflect in this scan. So while our Top/Down Analysis helps us with the broader view of the market, this Bottom/Up scan makes sure that we catch the slightest change in sentiment.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @Ianculley

If you can pry your eyes from the UK gilt and Credit Suisse articles, you’ll find it’s not all doom and gloom across the bond market – especially high-yield debt in the US.

A quick warning before we continue: You probably won’t see a similar message on the financial news. It’s just too optimistic for the current environment. It wouldn't get enough clicks.

But facts are facts. And right now, high-yield bonds are hooking higher, while stocks are also rising.

Check out the dual-pane chart of the Fallen Angel High-Yield Bond ETF $ANGL and the S&P 500 $SPX: 

ANGL tends to bottom with the S&P 500 at significant turning points. That’s because high-yield bonds are risk assets more akin to small-caps than investment-grade debt or Treasury bonds. 

A sustained breakdown in ANGL implies growing risk aversion among investors. But that’s not what we’re witnessing...

According to the Wall Street Journal, options volume continues to explode – driven primarily by the growing popularity of short-dated options.

Whether looking to speculate, hedge or collect premiums, options players are increasingly flocking to options that have fewer than 7 days to expiration. And with the proliferation of weekly options and three-times weekly expirations in popular index ETFs like $SPY, $QQQ, and $IWM, traders frequently have the opportunity to trade options expiring within 24 hours!

It is no surprise that these types of short-dated options are attractive to some players. They offer the best characteristics of options: defined risk, leverage, and affordability for even the smallest of traders.

Of course, there is no free lunch. As nice as all the pros are, the cons are equally supersized when the ass-end of gamma smacks your trade in the face. As quickly as profits can accumulate...