(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I’m going to be sharing some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

The majority of trades we do here with All Star Options tend to be directional in nature. And why not? We're leveraging best-in-class technical analysis to give us an uncommon edge to participate in emerging and/or continuing trends. And if we know anything as Traders, we know that if we have an edge, we should attempt to execute against that edge as often as possible.

Meanwhile, I recognize there is an entire cottage industry around "selling options premium" and for good reason -- it works! That doesn't mean it always works nor does it mean it's easy. I just don't like to make it my only thing.

That said, one of my favorite strategies is to sell premium via Short Strangles.

This week we’re looking at a long setup in the Financial and Metal sector. We're seeing new all-time highs in financial & metal sector indices and thought of taking a look at a stock that's ripe for a bullish move.

Let's take a look at this stock.

I agreed to give a presentation Saturday morning about Crypto Currencies.

But if you've seen me walk through my charts in the past, you know I have a hard time sticking to one asset class.

If we're talking about stocks, how can we do that without talking about the bond market?

If we're talking about Commodities, how can we have a serious conversation without including interest rates?

And if we're talking about Crypto Currencies, how can we not include the bank stocks with Crypto exposure, who are benefiting from both rising crypto prices AND rising interest rates?

Well, that's what happened Saturday morning.

A conversation that was supposed to be about Crypto, turns into an all out blitz of rising asset prices due to an asset shortage that we're seeing worldwide.

The reason risk assets are going up in price has nothing to do with the economy, or...

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in mid-July last year to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

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.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall Of Famers list is composed of the 50 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs.

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more -- but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the big US names on our original Hall Of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the 50 largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive in and take a look at what some of the largest stocks around the world are doing.

Here’s this week’s list:

And here’s how we arrived at it...

• We filtered out any names that...

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

Copper was a critical piece missing from the intermarket puzzle heading into the fourth quarter.

Just last week, copper was testing year-to-date lows and looking vulnerable for a downside break. Meanwhile, energy futures and interest rates were rising, and cyclical and value stocks were getting back in gear.

The mixed signals were impossible to ignore. It’s not likely that the recent breakouts in crude oil and the US 10-year yield would hold in an environment where copper is breaking down.

Dr. Copper is a great leading economic indicator and critical to the global growth narrative. Let’s see what it’s saying.

Here are two ways we were looking at the copper chart:

We were wondering whether this was a major head-and-shoulders top or just a continuation pattern that would...

This is the video recording of our October 15, 2021, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

If there is something to know about me when it comes to the market, it’s this: When I have a chance to talk about the Value Line Geometric Index, I don’t let it pass. The Value Line index is still a smidge further below its June high than the S&P 500 is from its September high, and the Value Line index has not (yet) re-claimed the lead on a YTD return basis. But over the past month, it has provided some leadership, showing the S&P 500-based indexes the path through the 50-day average. While the cap-weight index (SPY) has changed little over the past month, the equal-weight index (RSP) is up nearly 2% and the Value Line index is up more than 3%. I continue to believe that will be the theme of the fourth quarter.

This is the video recording of the October 14th Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche

10/14/21 2PM ET

Polkadot has shown some impressive strength in the last week.

Now that prices are back to the upper end of this range, a definitive breakout is only another $10 away.

This has all the same characteristics Solana, Axie Infinity, and Cardano showed before they all surged.

Accumulation, building a base... now we just need to wait for the breakout.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

It's mid-October and things are winding down in the garden. 

The greens have perked up as the weather has turned cooler. But attempts to ripen a few final tomatoes as the summer heat fades and the sun spends less and less time above the horizon is like waiting for Godot.

With peak garden season slowing down, I have enough time (and thyme) on my hands to reflect on what went well, and what went awry.

Those angry little gold buggers are finally starting to put some points on the board.

The lack of participation in Gold since last Spring has been something to witness. Every commodity on earth has skyrocketed, except for gold and other precious metals.

My argument is that maybe it's behaved that way because it's not a commodity. Maybe it's more of a currency, something I've always argued.

Right or wrong, call it whatever you want, it has done poorly since last summer of 2020.

And with the Dollar as strong as it's been, Gold has really taken a beating.

But not lately....

Can we call it a comeback?

You see, with new highs in the US Dollar this month, Gold did NOT make new lows. That bullish divergence is the first sign of life we've seen out of this thing for a while.

Here we're looking at the...

(While on vacation until Oct 26th, I'm going to be sharing you some anecdotes on my favorite trading strategies: why I use them, when, and how I manage them once they are on.)

Here's the thing about options trading: you can make it as complicated as your heart's content. And there are plenty of incredibly smart practitioners out there who run amazingly complex strategies involving all kinds of volatility and statistical arbitrage.

They analyze 3D volatility surface graphs, use lesser understood greeks, and interpret things like "volatility smile" and dispersion.

If that works for you, great! I always say: if it works, do more of it!

But another beautiful thing about options trading is that there are many different ways to pull profits out of the market, and most of them aren't as complicated as they may sound -- even if the strategies have exotic sounding names like "iron condor" or "broken-wing butterfly."

And my absolute favorite options strategy isn't even really a strategy at all -- it's simply buying long calls when I'm bullish!

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...

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

We’re beginning to see signs that risk-on behavior is re-entering the market.

Commodities are ripping in the face of a rising dollar.

Cyclical stocks are back in gear as the S&P 500 High Beta ETF $SPHB posts higher highs and higher lows relative to its low-volatility alternative $SPLV.

Meanwhile, classic risk-appetite barometer AUD/JPY sliced through a critical level of former support-turned-resistance earlier this week.

All of these point to an increasing risk-on environment. 

But what does the bond market have to say about investor positioning toward risk?

Let’s look at a couple credit spreads that speak to investors’ willingness to incur risk.

First, we have the Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF $LQD relative to the US Treasury Bond ETF $IEF:

Investment-grade...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Optimism has been unwound, but pessimism remains scarce. We have yet to see a level of fear associated with a complete unwind in sentiment. Still, risks loom overhead with earnings season heating up and the prospect of disappointing news on the horizon. The tailwinds that have accompanied the market for the past 15-months have dissipated. Analysts no longer revise expectations higher, and breadth is weak with more new lows than new highs across the NYSE and Nasdaq combined. Caution could quickly turn into nervousness and fear without a supportive backdrop in the event less than stellar news ushers in price volatility. It’s important to remember that sentiment resets slowly then all at once. We’ve been through the slow part. Now it’s time to see if the market can withstand a potential bout of disappointment.  

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Growth Expectations Making the Turn

Earnings season gets plenty of attention - most of it (in my...

Some of us were discussing internally today's topic.

After a few minutes, we were stumped.

The market hasn't given us much to write about over the last week.

And that's fine. If the market isn't giving you anything new, don't spend your day looking at the screen for something that isn't there.