From the Desk of Steve Strazza

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by the CEO of Sirius XM Holdings Inc $SIRI, Jennifer C. Witz.

Witz revealed a purchase of SIRI shares of roughly $1 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

To all my Floridians out there, be safe.

The indices were up over 1% yesterday.

We’ll see if we rest and pause or head straight to 453 on $SPY.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a very big move for the indices today.

Once $SPY broke out of its resistance zone, this one and the others really jumped.

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

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

The hedge fund reported a purchase of Frontier Communications Parent Inc $FYBR shares in the amount of $573,540.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is really stuck, and names aren't appealing to me at the moment.

We've drifted lower since early August, and now we have a slight bounce in the indices.

Now we need to see if it continues or we roll back over.

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Tough sledding today.

The market is caught between two levels, the eight-day moving average and the 21-day.

I traded small, and I'll do that the rest of the week.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I’ve had the pleasure of driving cross country multiple times, covering every inch of I-10. 

I made so many memorable moments on those drives …

I pushed through white-out conditions in Kansas. (My brother had an appointment with the State Department in Washington D.C., and we couldn’t stop.)

I "accidentally" crossed into Juarez, Mexico, which turned into one helluva time!

And I picked up more than one speeding ticket on the reservation (highway patrol doesn’t play in Navajo country).

I somehow made it coast to coast every time.

While many details of those treks slip away with the years, I’ll always remember the Alamo.

I know, it’s funny. I didn't even go inside.

To be clear, my memory of the Alamo has nothing to do with the historic battle or the revisionist histories that have been written and rewritten since.

Instead, I picture a meager fort in the twilight – nothing more. A truly humble beacon of strength.

The understated image resurfaces in my mind's eye this week as I plan and plot the best way to trade gold.

As gold meets increased...

From the Desk of Steve Strazza

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

The hedge fund reported a purchase of Frontier Communications Parent Inc $FYBR shares in the amount of $573,540.

As I mentioned last week, we're in an environment where we want to be collecting delta-neutral options premium. Unfortunately, we can either pick instruments that are in well-defined ranges or we can sell high implied volatility, but it's getting increasingly hard to find both.

With this in mind, today's trade is in an instrument where options pricing may not be as elevated as it was earlier in the year, but it's still giving us a lot of room to be wrong.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Tough sledding today.

The market is caught between two levels, the eight-day moving average and the 21-day.

I traded small, and I’ll do that the rest of the week.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I’ve had the pleasure of driving cross country multiple times, covering every inch of I-10. 

I made so many memorable moments on those drives …

I pushed through white-out conditions in Kansas. (My brother had an appointment with the State Department in Washington D.C., and we couldn’t stop.)

I “accidentally” crossed into Juarez, Mexico, which turned into one helluva time!

And I picked up more than one speeding ticket on the reservation (highway patrol doesn’t play in Navajo country).

I somehow made it coast to coast every time.

While many details of those treks slip away with the years, I’ll always remember the Alamo.

I know, it’s funny. I didn’t even go inside.

To be clear, my memory of the Alamo has nothing to do with the historic battle or the revisionist histories that have been written and rewritten since.

Instead, I picture a meager fort in the twilight – nothing more. A truly humble beacon of strength.

The understated image resurfaces in my mind’s eye this week as I plan and plot the best way to trade gold.

As gold meets increased selling pressure...

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

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Lloyd M. Yates, director, president and CEO of NiSource Inc $NI.

Yates reported a purchase of 40,000 shares of NI, equivalent to $1,057,600.

With stocks selling off this quarter, the bears are back.

Could you imagine still telling yourself that the rally we got in equities over the past year was a bear market?

What kind of serial killer thinks like that?

A 3-5% correction in some of the major Indexes can cause people to lose their minds.

Heck, you may be wondering yourself if this is the beginning of a huge move lower for stock prices. I certainly am.

Remember, every big move starts with a small one. But not every small move turns into a big one.

That's where Credit Spreads come in. If there is real stress in the market, you're going to see it in credit.

But as stock prices corrected this month, Credit Spreads only got more narrow.

Here's an easy way to view that, comparing the prices of High Yield Bonds vs US Treasury Bonds:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It's the last week of August, and the market had a nice recovery on Friday.

We'll see if $SPY 440 holds for a move back to 444 or not.