From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Easter to all those celebrating this weekend!

The market is in consolidation mode, and we'll soon find how much more it needs.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market surely did consolidate today, but the action was extremely whippy.

Tech led the way lower, but there isn't any fear out there, as the $VXX keeps sliding lower.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

US Treasury futures are breaking out.

The 30-, 10-, and 5-year contracts are trading above our risk levels. And the bond ETFs we covered a couple of weeks ago are also flashing buy signals.

The bond market is sending a well-advertised message to all investors…

It’s time to buy bonds.

Let's review one of the most liquid treasury ETFs, $TLT.

Zooming out on the weekly chart of the Treasury bond ETF TLT… 

We have a potential failed breakdown below the former 2014 lows, followed by a tight, multi-month consolidation.

A clear break above 110 and the former 2018 lows turns our view higher toward 135. 

On the other hand, a resolution below 100 carries downside risks back to the 2011 lows at approximately 88.

Based on the...

We kicked around a few ideas in this morning's Analyst meeting and the one thing that stood out to me is that I do not currently have any long exposure to the healthcare sector --- one of the strongest sectors out there.

That changes today.

We're going to get long a familiar name in the space, but we're going to do it carefully with a defined risk spread because we've got earnings coming up soon. So we'll go for a longer-duration trade and bet on earnings to be a catalyst for higher prices.

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

Have you heard the latest?

They're telling us that only 5-10 stocks are holding up this market.

How dumb do they think we are?

Go look for yourself.

I count well over 100 stocks that are over $10B market cap with returns greater than 20% just in 2023 alone. These are NYSE and Nasdaq stocks.

Half of those are up over 30%.

And many more are up over 40%.

Today’s most significant insider transaction is a Form 4 filing by Global Infrastructure Investors III LLC.

The fund reported a purchase of $2.2 million in Clearway Energy $CWEN.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Passover to those who celebrate!!

The market is trying to consolidate, as it should, and I think it needs more of it. I'd like a healthy pull into $SPY 405 or so.

This is the video recording of the April 5, 2023, Inside Scoop Weekly Strategy Session.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The US Dollar Index $DXY is dropping – and our bearish USD trade ideas are beginning to trigger.

While I tend to stick to major developed-market (DM) currencies for placing trades, I still monitor the less liquid forex pairs for information. 

I want to see DM currency strength spill over into emerging-market (EM) currencies, confirming the broadening US dollar weakness. 

As always, I strive to break it down to one level, one chart, whenever possible. 

This next chart does the job…

Here’s the WisdomTree Emerging Currency Fund ETF $CEW:

CEW is carving out a possible reversal pattern below a polarity zone, coinciding with a series of key pivot highs and lows from 2021 and 2022. 

Notice momentum has improved as price churns below resistance. This supports a potential upside resolution.

My view...

Strazza and I have been having fun discussing options stuff on Twitter Spaces over the past few weeks. Even our friend Brian Lund (@bclund) has been contributing mightily to the conversations.

The topic of discussion has mostly centered around 0-DTE – or daily expiring – options and some experimentation I’ve been doing in this very active corner of the options market. While I will continue to talk about that, we decided we want to broaden out the topic material to include anything else we’re seeing that we can trade with options.

We’ll discuss trades we have on, trades we might be considering entering or anything else that feels topical in the world of options.

During the calls, we like to encourage audience participation. One piece of feedback I’ve heard from a few of you is that you don’t know how to actually participate. “Where’s the button to raise my hand?”

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

That was a healthy contraction today.

I would think we still need more of a pull-in, but time will tell.

We've adjusted a position 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:

Asset prices trend.

We know this.

We all have the data.

Just because some (most) investors choose to ignore it, doesn't mean that moves in stock prices are random.

They're not.

Stock prices trend.

It's just math. Or science maybe. Or both, I don't know.

But they do trend. This we know is a fact.

And since last June, the majority of stocks have been appreciating in price. And very few stocks have been falling in price, to the point where there are almost no stocks that are still falling.

So if stocks were not going up in price in this environment, that would be really weird.

Today’s most significant insider transaction report is a Form 4 filing by Cormorant Asset Management.

The firm revealed a purchase of $12 million in Biomea Fusion $BMEA.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Another gap higher this morning for the indices.

We might hit $SPY 421 quicker than thought if we keep up this pace.

This is the video recording of our April 3rd Monthly Charts Live Strategy Session

Gold finished the month within ten dollars of a new all-time high on a monthly closing basis.

It's an impressive feat by any standards, but even more so considering March is the weakest month of the year from a seasonal perspective.

With Gold futures bucking seasonal weakness and Silver futures and mining stocks bid, investors are sending a clear message to gold bugs everywhere...

It's time to party!

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...