Listen, everyone struggles.

Your struggles are most certainly different than mine. It follows that they are different from your neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and even family members.

They may be better or worse. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you have struggles, they are yours, and to varying degrees, these struggles affect your mental health and put you at risk of entering a self-fulfilling spiral that you can't escape from until you've lost everything.

I believe traders and finance professionals don't talk enough about their struggles. I know I personally do not.

There is a pervasive, institutionalized, and incentivized culture in our industry to project calm and confidence at all cost.

Everything is great! We're making a ton of money! Nobody is better than us! Let us manage your money for you!

I'm calling bullshit on that because the costs are greater than we can imagine.

The sooner we talk about it, the better we can tackle problems with effective solutions, and the likelier we are to achieve desirable results.

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to...

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in GLD.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

We're back this morning LIVE on Stock Market TV with The Best Morning Show in Finance. 

Today's guest is legend Todd Sohn, who is always a fan favorite. If you don't know Todd, he is the ETF & Technical Strategist at Strategas Securities.

You never want to miss one of his appearances. Our chat goes nuts every time he's on.

...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Thilo Schroeder, director of Revolution Medicines $RVMD and managing member of Nextech Invest, made waves with a $60 million insider buy, acquiring 1.3 million shares.

Nextech, known for investing in cutting-edge life sciences companies, often backs transformative players in oncology. 

Schroeder's move underscores his confidence in RVMD’s potential.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from December 9, 2024:

Kevin Tang, President of Tang Capital Management, filed a Form 4 revealing a $10,822,000 purchase in Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc $AUPH.

Last but not least, the CEOs of MSCI Inc $MSCI and Biglari Holdings Inc $BH both filed Form 4s, revealing purchases of their own stock.

Today's number is... 6

We have now experienced 6 consecutive days with more S&P 500 stocks declining than advancing. This matches the previous streak of negative breadth observed over the past seven years.

Should we be concerned about this?

Here’s the chart:

(right-click and open image in new tab to zoom in)

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The blue line in the top panel shows the price of the S&P 500 index.
• The black line at the bottom represents the consecutive days the S&P 500 had more decliners than advancers.

The Takeaway: When we dig into the data, we can see that during the past 6 trading days, several large stocks increased in size while many smaller stocks decreased. This shift in market participation doesn't mean the market is now going to fall.

It suggests a rotation back into stocks that have recently underperformed, particularly large-cap growth companies.

The top 10 stocks by market cap have an average return of 4.9% since last Monday...

Below is the 9th ASC Mastermind  Course. In this video, I discuss my process for finding the best small-caps. 

If you don't pay attention to small-caps, you should start. 

At All Star Charts, we look at small-caps for two reasons: they give us valuable information about the market, and they give us many trade ideas. 

Small-caps might have a reputation for underperforming large-caps at the index level (at least, for most of the last 15 years), but at the individual stock level, this is where the biggest winners are often found. After all, every large-cap stock was once a small-cap. 

The challenge in trading small-caps however, is that there's so many of them. So we've come up with a number of scans specifically designed to help us identify the small-caps in the best position to pop. Here's how we do it. 

Enjoy.

Chinese equities have been undergoing meaningful changes beneath the surface since they posted their best week ever back in October.

A new uptrend appears to be taking shape for these stocks.

Looking at the bigger picture, when we compare Chinese stocks to their U.S. counterparts, the relative trend sits at a critical support level.

Take a look at the Shanghai Composite $SSEC versus the S&P 500 $SPX over the last three decades:

This ratio is at a critical inflection point, suggesting a trend reversal and outperformance from Chinese stocks could be on the cusp of beginning.

I can't think of a more logical place for this to happen than here.

Several months ago, we discussed the blowout momentum readings for the junior gold and silver miners.

These momentum thrusts often initiate the beginning of significant trend reversals, not the end.

Since then, the price action has been lackluster. However, our technical analysis suggests that the bulls are on the cusp of stepping in and resuming the primary uptrend.

Let's delve into the charts and how we plan to profit from them.

Silver Miners $SIL are printing fresh 52-week highs relative to silver futures:

We're coming up on expiration for a play in a Canadian Bank ($CM) that has treated us very well since the summer.

And now a new Canadian Bank is displaying signs of a fresh multi-year breakout. We're going to keep this Canada party rolling with today's new trade.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Adjustment to ARKK position.
3. Closed GLD at Profit Target.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

We're back this morning LIVE on Stock Market TV with The Best Morning Show in Finance. 

It's not just Technical Analysis all the time. It's actually quite the opposite. We have a lot of conversations with really smart people about all kinds of topics.

Today's guest is my pal Steve Reitmeister, who brings 40 years of experience, including being Editor-in-Chief at Zacks.com and CEO of Stocknews.com. 

...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended December 6, 2024. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers, there’...

Control Empresarial de Capitales SA is at it again! 

The Mexican investment giant just dropped $9.25 million on more shares of PBF Energy Inc $PBF, pushing its ownership stake to a hefty 24.20%.

What’s noteworthy is that Control Empresarial continues to build its position in PBF despite the stock’s current trend being far from ideal. 

This move highlights Control Empresarial’s strong conviction and a clear long-term focus.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from December 6, 2024:

In another Form 4, director Jeffrey C. Campbell, who is also the CFO of American Express, bought 6,000 shares of Marathon Petroleum Corportion $MPC for $149.60, a total purchase of $897,642.

Today's number is... 500

The S&P 500 is reaching all-time highs, yet more stocks are declining than advancing on most days.

That's what we saw last week! 

But does it matter? 

Below is a table showing instances of the S&P 500 reaching all-time highs, with more stocks declining than advancing, along with the weekly forward returns:

(right-click and open image in new tab to zoom in)

The Takeaway: On Friday afternoon, there was a lot of discussion on X, with many bears highlighting that poor breadth readings while the S&P 500 index is at all-time highs are a bearish signal for the markets. 

I usually pay little attention to what perma bears are saying; instead, I prefer to dig into the data and decide whether the information is valuable or not.

Since 1950, there have been 25 instances where the  S&P 500 is reaching all-time highs, yet more stocks are declining than advancing on most days.

On average, a year later, the median return is 14.9%, with...

As part of an educational effort, I've unlocked this previous paywalled post so anyone can access.

I've flipped my short-term bias (that looks out weeks) to bearish as the three largest tokens in the asset class test critical resistance levels. Ethereum has been the exception in the group over the last few weeks, but even now it looks set up to consolidate its gains.

If Ethereum, the one token that has helped support market breadth over the last two weeks, begins to pause, it could set the asset class up for a few weeks of indiscriminate selling. What would prove me wrong is seeing all three of these assets complete successful breakouts.

Regardless of whether sellers step in here, I think this is a good area to pay ourselves and take some profits off the table. It is prudent trading/investing to scale out of positions as the market works higher.

I think if we see any meaningful weakness here in the coming weeks, it will present itself as a great buying opportunity.

But in the interim, I think the best approach is to be patient.

Directional Bias

• Short...