With stocks off to a very strong start to the year, we're certainly setting ourselves up for a positive January.

There is still about a week left, but the S&P500 is already up 4.7% so far this month.

Historically, if we finish up, and it looks like the chances of that are high, then it bodes very well for stocks throughout the rest of the year.

The largest insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filing by EcoR1 Capital LLC, which reported a purchase of roughly $2.9 million in Zymeworks Inc $ZYME.

EcoR1 Capital also filed a Form 13G, disclosing a stake of 7.80% in the cancer biotech stock Janux Therapeutics $JANX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The futures are indicating lower this morning. A healthy digesting is warranted.

I'd like to see 396, roughly, held over the next few days on $SPY.

If we push past 402.70, then we can potentially see 405, the next level above.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended January 20, 2023. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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...

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I mentioned in this morning's note that $SPY had a date with 400.

We hit that level and ran to 402.60, which was top of the Bollinger band.

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

The hedge fund reported an additional purchase worth roughly $1.3 million in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings $CCO, increasing its total stake to 10.5%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It looks like $SPY has a date with 400, as long as 392.75 holds.

That was a powerful day on Friday. The buyers stepped in.

After a very strong 4th quarter for stocks, it looks like 2023 is getting started right where they left off.

But this time, it's the Nasdaq that's leading the way.

So far this year, the Nasdaq100 is up every single week.

It's largest components are driving the overall market higher.

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

Risk appetite is returning to markets as breadth expands beneath the surface for US and international equities.

Insiders are getting more active and more aggressive, and the number of bullish opportunities from our Inside Scoop universe continues to increase gradually.

We think the coming months and quarters will be a favorable environment for those looking to buy stocks.

With that said, we have a handful of bullish setups today. Let's dive right in.

What do the movies The Wizard of Oz and The Matrix have in common? The answer is that they both are stories about artificial intelligence.  The Wizard of Oz is one of the earliest examples of this in popular culture, with the philosophical question of what types of AI matter most - was it the Scarecrow, who needed brains (computational power), or the Tin Man, who needed heart (the emotional intelligence to understand us)? 

Thanks to the efforts of early pioneers in the field like Alan Turing in the 1950s, who helped address and begin work on these problems, we can fast forward 70 years and marvel at contemporary companies like OpenAI, that have solved many of those initial challenges.  

Here at All Star Charts, we’re more old school – but we’re not outdated.  We know that the foundations of technical analysis are predicated on the study of behavioral science, and how biases like price anchoring, fear, and greed create repeatable patterns we can take advantage of. 

And since we’re on the subject, it turns out that investors, computers, whoever or whatever is driving the market moves we’re seeing today; they’re paying attention heavily to...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This is the third Friday in a row that we've had a melt-up.

We closed the gaps on the indices, and away we went.