From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Every day last week the market would dip in the morning and rally in the afternoon.

This week has been the opposite: We've been grinding lower in the afternoons.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

I'm in New York City along with the rest of the All Star Charts team for the annual CMT symposium this week, so there's no Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session today.

We'll be back with our regular schedule next week.

For today, we figured we'd do a quick post discussing some of the macro themes we're watching right now, as well as a trade idea in one of our favorite names.

This week will be an opportunity for me to practice the art of giving up control. It will also be an incredible opportunity to practice acceptance and patience.

The market is open and I’m typing this piece while traveling 30,000 feet above Midwestern corn fields en route to New York City.

Thankfully, I’ve got internet access on the plane and can keep tabs on the market and my positions. But it’s not perfect. Anyone who’s tried to work with airplane WiFi knows it isn’t always as reliable as we’d like it to be.

I’m headed to NYC to reconnect with the All Star Charts team, celebrate our friend Brian Shannon in honor of his recent book release, and attend the Chartered Market Technician’s 50th Annual Symposium.

All week, I’ll be gathering with some of the smartest market minds, driven traders, and portfolio managers around. I’m hoping to...

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

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Monday May 1st @ 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Monday evening:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Two heavyweights reported earnings yesterday and, as of now, $MSFT came out on top.

Now lets see if it holds on to the gains. 

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Texas Capital Bancshares $TCBI director Robert W. Stallings.

Stallings reported a purchase of roughly $1 million of TCBI stock.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

"Rates, the US dollar, crude oil, and the S&P 500... repeat!"

These charts swirl atop every investor’s mind as markets await the upcoming rate hike decision.

Meanwhile, it’s messy!

The S&P 500 challenges the upper bounds of a multi-month range. The US dollar and interest rates chop sideways. And crude oil remains resilient despite increased selling pressure.

But not all markets are trapped in a trading range right now. In fact, there’s one forex cross breaking down, suggesting lower yields and cheaper crude oil…

It's the nokkie-stocky, the Norwegian krone and the Swedish krone!

Check out the triple-pane chart of the US 1o-year yield, crude oil futures, and the NOK/SEK cross:

I want to note up front that I used semi-log scale for the US 10-year yield chart. The reason: consistency, as the other two charts are in semi-log, and to present the data in the cleanest possible way.

I did not adjust the scaling to fit a trendline on the 10-year chart!...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Today was the first real breakdown for the indices, with $IWM leading the way.

For $SPY and $QQQ it was the first real break below their respective 21-day moving averages.

The next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

We had a resting GTC order filled at our profit target in the Paid-to-Play portfolio today:

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Ares Management.

Ares revealed a purchase of roughly $4.1 million in Frontier Communications Parent $FYBR.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This market is completely stuck in a range, and we haven't been able to get out of it for at least two weeks.

This morning the indices are back near yesterday’s low.

Welcome to The Buzz! 

Our mission at The Chart Report is to highlight ideas from the best traders and technicians on social media. 

Now, we’re taking this concept one step further and tapping into the madness of the crowd. 

That’s why we created The Buzz! 

Our mission at The Buzz is simple: to identify and profit from the most-talked-about stocks on the market today. 

But isn’t the crowd always wrong? 

The grandfather of contrarian investing, Humphrey B. Neil once said; 

“The public is often right during the trends, but wrong at both ends.” 

We agree with Humphrey, which is why we’ll be focusing on catching the meat of these trends, with both long and short ideas. 

The Buzz uses proprietary social media data from our partners at Likefolio. 

Every week, we compile a list of stocks that are experiencing the most momentum in terms of investor interest. Let’s take a look at which stocks are buzzing this week!

...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest Minor Leaguers report.

We've had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it back in 2020 and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, Under the Hood.

For the first year or so, we focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B.

That was fun, but we wanted to branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

We expanded our universe to include some mid-caps.

To make the cut for our Minor Leaguers list, a company must have a market cap between $1 and $4B.

And it doesn't have to be a Russell component — it can be any US-listed equity. With participation expanding around the globe, we want all those ADRs in our universe.

The same price and liquidity filters are applied. Then, as always, we sort by proximity to...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

First palladium, now platinum?

Platnuim broke out of an inverted head and shoulders pattern last week, printing fresh 52-week highs.

The bullish data points continue to roll in despite the waning strength in gold and silver.

Check it out!

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Our precious metals index is hitting fresh 52-week highs despite the waning strength in gold and silver.

Only three markets comprise the index. That leaves only one possible culprit – platinum!

First palladium, now platinum?

It doesn’t matter whether you consider platinum or palladium true precious metals. The industrious side of the family is chipping in, supporting a new structural uptrend for the entire space. 

Let’s check it out!

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I think this market might be on hold till Big Tech earnings are behind us.

Time will tell.