From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market was all over the place today.

Look, we're waiting for the debt ceiling negotiations to end before the market makes its next move.

That's the deal... or no deal.

The bears have found a new home: gold mining stocks.

Silver’s breakdown earlier this month raised the caution flag for the entire precious metals space. 

Less than two weeks later, gold futures and mining stocks are falling under the wrath of increased selling pressure. Precious metals bears are winning the battle as support levels fall to the wayside. 

Meanwhile, the bulls are reluctant to leave without a fight…

Let’s review the recent action in mining stocks.

While I always prefer a price chart, I also like Grant’s moving average tables.

He measures the closing prices of all 30 components of the PHLX Gold and Silver Mining Index $XAU against (above or below) multiple moving averages, from five days at the far left of the table to 250 days at the far right.

This provides an excellent read on trends across multiple timeframes.

Here’s the table heading into the May 5 close:

A sea of green! Sellers hadn’t made their way to these mining names just yet.

Fast-forward a couple weeks, and the study presents a far different picture:

Red dominates the table across shorter time frames, displacing the...

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

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

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 buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by the president of Gen Digital Inc $GEN, Ondrej Vlcek.

Vlcek revealed a purchase of 300,000 shares, equivalent to $4.7 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We're still waiting on debt ceiling negotiations.

The indices pulled back on Friday.

Some things are changing.

Have you noticed?

Let's keep something in mind. During healthy market environments, you historically see correlations falling.

It's when volatility spikes in bear markets that correlations all go to 1.

So are these recent divergences just further evidence that this is a strong market for stocks?

The breadth expansion and sector rotation we keep seeing certainly points to that.

So let's take a look.

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.

I've been at this for 20 years. I've seen a lot of uptrends and bull markets in my day. I've studied many more that came before me.

Along the way, do you know what you'll find a lot of in bull markets?

New 52-week highs.

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

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. You can click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month. ...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

Watch out for cotton!

Back in February, I highlighted a bullish setup in cotton futures. 

Buyers were hammering a key retracement level from below. The way I learned it, "The more times a level is tested, the higher the likelihood it breaks."

Three months later…

The July contract is knocking on the door – again!

How polite.

Check out July cotton nearing the January 2022 closing high of 88.34:

That’s my level.

If and when the July contract breaks above 88.50 (let’s give it a little room), I like it long with an initial target of approximately 106. I’m also watching for a 14-day RSI reading greater than 70 for bullish confirmation.

Not all contracts are approaching buy zones this week....

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The morning session turned into a consolidation after the recent breakout in $SPY.

Powell spoke at 11:00 a.m. ET, so stocks were in wait-and-see mode.

It's been a good run for many of our bullish long trades. As such, it wouldn't surprise me if stocks took a bit of a breather soon.

And considering so many stocks we've been tracking are starting to look pretty extended, I'm going to go fishing in the weak stocks pond to find some opportunities for portfolio diversification in the event that stocks go sideways or dip a little bit in the weeks ahead.

One nice thing is the stock market lift this week has really zapped options premiums across the board. So today's trade offers us a somewhat rare opportunity to get responsibly short with long puts.

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

Uncle Warren strikes again…

Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A has filed another Form 4 for Occidental Petroleum $OXY, this time revealing a purchase worth $201 million.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

$SPY broke the February 2 highs, and we're almost at the 421.22 gap-fill.

Maybe we see that level today.