From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Wishing all the best of luck to the traders in the live trading room, I took an early leave this Friday.

$VXX was on our side, and that was a great morning!

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Monday night we held our March Monthly Conference Call, which Premium Members can access and rewatch here.

In this post, we’ll do our best to summarize it by highlighting five of the most important charts and/or themes we covered, along with commentary on each

Let’s get right into it!

We're making a tactical bearish bet on a transportation stock that appears to be riding the rails south to lower prices.

It's got earnings coming up in late April, so we'll be buying an express ticket on a short-term play to capture a move.

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

With Financials continuing to fall apart, we're focused on the assets that are making new highs - Bitcoin and Gold being 2 of them.

I was on Fox Business yesterday talking about the importance of the 2007 highs in the Financials Index.

Here's a fun behind the scenes look.

The most significant insider transaction on today's list comes in a Form 4 from Carl Icahn.

Icahn bought $30 million worth of Southwest Gas Holdings $SWX, increasing his ownership stake from 12.64% to 14.44%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I like to say this market is not for the faint of heart.

This morning we're trading below the 200-day moving average on $SPY.

Unless we recover 392.44 we can head back down to 385.

I mean, do I really know my risk?

Stocks and Futures traders like to talk about how they use stop-loss orders to define their risks, and that’s smart.

A lifetime ago I managed a small, independent hedge fund that traded commodities with a trend-following strategy. This strategy entered positions that I’d attempt to hold for weeks or months (if they were working).

Every position I had on had a resting stop-loss order working in the market, giving me comfort that I knew the most I could lose if I was wrong.

All that comfort I was enjoying changed one day after a trip to my clearing firm’s office in downtown Chicago.

I sat down with one of the firm’s risk managers for a simple “get-to-know-you” chat. He was curious about my...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This market can't get its act together.

It started off strong, then it faltered.

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The Federal Reserve handed down a 25-basis-point rate increase on Wednesday.

And Fed Chair Jerome Powell implied an impending pause in the hiking cycle.

You know what this means...

It’s time to buy the four "Bs" – Bonds, Bitcoin, Big-Tech, and Bullion.

JC and Strazza talked about it on Pardon the Price Action earlier this week.

Today, I’ll highlight bonds with a couple key levels to trade against as we add these assets to our portfolios.

First up is the 7-10 Year US Treasury ETF $IEF:

It’s not there yet. But if and when IEF reclaims the critical shelf of former lows at approximately 100, we’re long!

The next potential resistance level hangs overhead at last year’s August pivot high of 105.75. This is a logical level to take profits or “feed the ducks.” 

But these trades are more about adding bonds back into the mix after last...

If you would've told me a few months ago that we'd see a large crypto exchange (FTX) go bust and later a number of big banks become insolvent and collapse to zero, I would've laughed you out of the room if you followed up with: "...and bitcoin will rally."

I mean, there is no way I would've agreed with that sentiment.

Thankfully, I don't get paid for my opinions. Because the market couldn't care less about what I think.

The strength in Bitcoin (and crypto in general) has truly been a sight to behold in recent months and in particular over the last few weeks.

The poster child instrument to play bitcoin in the equities market is via Microstrategy $MSTR. For those with their head in the sand on all thing bitcoin, this software services company has transformed itself into essentially a bitcoin ETF, having invested all of its working capital into bitcoing, and taking loans to leverage into even more bitcoin.

We'll leave the discussion on whether or not this is crazy to another blog post. But for now, MSTR offers us a great way to participate in continued strength in bitcoin and we're going to do it with a defined risk options spread.

We had a resting GTC order filled 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 Bihua Chen, the CEO of Cormorant Asset Management.

Chen revealed a purchase of $16.7 million in MoonLake Immunotherapeutics $MLTX.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw a swift reversal down in the indices yesterday after the Fed's rate-hike announcement.

Now we need to see if we stabilize in here to trend back up or break down.

We don't have bull markets without Financials.

Go back and check for yourself.

So this one, by definition, has to be the chart that matters the most.

Look at the Financial Sector Index currently retesting its former highs from before the Great Financial Crisis:

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

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

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was a sleepy morning for the market...

And, of course, that changed as the day went on.