In this podcast episode I sit down with one of my favorite technicians of all-time - John Roque. This is one of those people who influenced my thinking very early on. The combination of his simplicity along with sports analogies to describe market behavior made me a huge fan of his right away. This was about 15 years ago.

Since then, you'll here me throw out John Roqueisms all the time. I learned a lot from his way of thinking.

In this conversation we talk about the stock market, Gold, Bitcoin and Tech stocks. John also shares some fun stories about those who inspired him throughout his career and some of the things he’s learned more recently.

This was a lot of fun and a real treat for me.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza 

Welcome to our latest RPP Report, where we publish return tables for various asset classes and categories, along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the absolute and relative trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

We consider this our state of the union address, as we break down and reiterate both our tactical and structural outlook on various asset classes. Our ultimate goal is to discuss the most important themes and developments that are currently playing out in markets around the world.

There's been plenty of action these past few weeks. Let's kick things off with stocks and try to make sense of what we're seeing.

Here's our US equities table:

Let's start with a triple pane chart of mid-caps, small-caps, and micro-caps.

...

We have 2 new Options trades this week as our Thanksgiving Pairing. A Bull Call Spread in Unity Software $U and Bullish Risk Reversal in Cheniere Energy $LNG.

Here are the plays:

We're buying a $U February 200/250 Bull Call Spread for around a $10.00 debit.

And an $LNG June 90/130 Bullish Risk Reversal for an approximately 25 cents net credit.

Check out our short video with the thought process behind these trades:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

You already know how we feel about the US Bond Market. 

We like the short side when it comes to treasuries.

Lately, we’ve been keeping a close eye on the long end of the curve since it hasn’t kept pace with shorter-term yields. Though this is still the case, the 30-year yield has found support in recent weeks as rates continue to rise across the curve. 

This should keep the bulls happy for now as an environment where long rates are making new lows is not supportive of higher prices for risk assets. 

But that’s not what’s happening. We remain in a rising-rate environment and don’t see signs of that changing anytime soon. As long as this remains the case, we want to be selling bonds and betting on higher prices for risk assets.

We’ve already...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: A healthy level of optimism ushers investors into the holiday season. But lofty expectations are neither reflected in price nor supported by breadth. Participation is struggling to expand beneath the surface and cyclical areas of the market are retesting critical levels of support. A narrow rally running on empty leaves the market vulnerable to disappointment and could challenge  high spirits. The question becomes how patient will investors be, especially since consumer sentiment is in the dumps. If the fish aren’t biting, some may prefer to cut bait.

Sentiment Report Chart of the Week: Consumers Are Cranky

The latest data from the University of Michigan shows consumers are in a pretty bad mood. The Consumer Sentiment Index for November is at its lowest level in a decade. While the expansion in the number of stocks hitting new lows probably doesn’t help, this seems to reflect political divisions and partisan divides more than than an actual economic...

Given an opportunity, JC will gladly talk your ear off about proper wine pairings for your Thanksgiving meals. No matter your flavor or preference, JC can find something that works. After all, he did get his sommeliers certification.

During this morning's analyst meeting, we were discussing what trade we wanted to put on today and we had two great ideas. We debated the merits of each, and we couldn't decide which one we liked best right now.

Stock 1 or Stock 2?

Bills or Dolphins?

Gators or Hurricanes?

Cats or Dogs?

And then in typical JC fashion he said:

Why not both?

And my response was: "Of course! Why not? We'll call it a Thanksgiving Pairing!"

So here we are.

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 Wednesday December 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 Wednesday evening:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @IanCulley

At the beginning of the month, we pointed out the disconnect between risk assets and the currency market. 

Stocks up and down the cap scale were breaking out to new highs and energy futures were resolving higher from multi-year bases -- all while emerging-market and commodity-centric currencies approached year-to-date lows.

Something wasn’t right. 

We’d expect these risk-on currencies to catch higher given their strong correlation with other risk assets. But this hasn’t been the case. In fact, seeing as currency markets had been out of sync with other asset classes for months, we really didn’t want to overthink this development.

But what appeared to be another mixed intermarket signal proved a valuable warning.

Fast-forward to today and the weakness that was evident among emerging-market currencies is spreading to stocks and commodities. Small-caps and crude oil are retesting critical breakout levels, and cyclical stocks are failing to sustain their recent moves.

In...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza

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 the stock is about to move in their direction and make them a pretty penny...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to our latest “Minor Leaguers” report.

We’ve already had some great trades come out of this small-cap-focused column since we launched it late last year and started rotating it with our flagship bottom-up scan, “Under The Hood.”

We recently decided to expand our universe to include some mid-caps…

For about a year now, we’ve focused only on Russell 2000 stocks with a market cap between $1 and $2B. That was fun, but it’s time we branch out a bit and allow some new stocks to find their way onto our list.

The way we’re doing this is simple…

To make the cut for our new 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...

It's still not all that pretty out there underneath the surface.

But new all-time highs in the S&P500 is probably not something we should ignore.

History has taught us that when we see that, there are usually more new all-time highs coming shortly after that. And then after that again....

On this episode of Pardon The Price Action, we talk about whether these are all retests or failed breakouts.

That's the big question.

Full video below or Listen to the podcast version.

With Oil testing 76, Financials and Industrials retesting former highs, small-caps and even Bitcoin near critical levels, we want to know if this is just a pause, or the beginning of the end.

All this and so much more on the latest episode Pardon the Price Action!