In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. No new positions today.
2. Defensive adjustment to XLV position.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

[Editors Note] Getting away from the screens is healthy for the soul.

It's important in order to keep the mind right.

And perhaps, I should add, that it's great for the bottom line.

Trust me.

I've been there.

Get away for a few days. Your portfolio returns will thank you. 

And I'm eating my own cooking here. I'm leaving for a few days, so you'll be hearing from different members of the ASC Research Team while I'm away.

Some of them you already know well. Some you're just getting to know. And others you're meeting for the fist time.

So try to be nice!

And please don't let them burn the place down while I'm gone.

I'll be back next week!

JC

My family has always been a healthcare family - I’m the son of a nurse and a pharmacist. When I was 15, they turned...

Jack L. Macdowell, chief investment officer of Chimera Investment Corporation $CIM, acquired $998,580 worth of CIM shares.

Kevin M. Sheehan, Interim CEO of Dave & Buster's Entertainment $PLAY, purchased 37,735 shares.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from December 12, 2024:

Director Mark A. Weinberger acquired 1,000 shares of Johnson & Johnson $JNJ.

We also witnessed insider buys in Hubbell Incorporated $HUBB and Jackson Financial $JXN.

Even though the S&P 500 has experienced a series of negative days, no increase in new lows suggests breadth isn't significantly weakening.

One of the weakest sectors post-election has been the SPDR Materials ETF $XLB, which marked its ninth straight down day today.

The last time we saw such a streak of consecutive losses was during the middle of the previous bear market in 2022. 

What makes this particularly significant now is that it’s occurring right at a key level of former highs.

If the bulls want to maintain control, they’ll need to defend this level of former resistance-turned-support. 

As long as it holds and no new lows emerge, I’ll treat this losing streak as part of a corrective wave. We’re likely nearing a bounce as this pullback comes to an end.

Alfonso

Today we held our Breakout Multiplier Weekly Strategy Session. If you’re not a member, click here to join us.

We do this every Thursday at 11 a.m. ET for Breakout Multiplier members, where we discuss new trades ideas, open positions and answer questions from the chat.

Here are two takeaways from today’s call:

• One Rule: Sell the Double

Discipline is crucial in any trading strategy. 

Today, we had a brief discussion on why it is so important to "sell the double." 

It’s the only hard and fast rule we have. But it’s critical. Without it, the whole thing breaks down.

Think of a double as a free swing at a potential multibagger. As long as we sell lots of doubles, the big winners...

Here's the replay and chartbook from the December 12 livestream. Note that we talk strategy every Thursday at 11 am Eastern time, and I answer questions in the chat room.

Be sure to join us and maximize your return potential.

In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:

1. New position in IGV.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. Exited TLT for a profit.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

We'll be streaming LIVE today on Stock Market TV with The Best Morning Show in Finance. This is where we talk about which stocks are moving, the major themes in the market, and what we're doing about it.

Today's guest is our in-house Quantitative Strategist Grant Hawkridge.

Grant joins us from the other side of the world in Australia. So let's all give him a warm U.S. welcome!

...

OPKO Health $OPK CEO Phillip Frost just put his money where his mouth is, snapping up 500,000 of OPK shares at $1.56 each.

Remember, executives sell for many reasons. But they only buy because they believe in their company and think it will have a higher stock price in the future.

Frost is clearly placing his chips on OPKO’s future.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from December 11, 2024:

Director David B. Smith, Jr. bought 635 shares of Illinois Tool Works $ITW, equivalent to $174,752.

Today's number is... 8

We have now experienced 8 consecutive days with more S&P 500 stocks declining than advancing. 

But, this time it is different…

Here’s the chart:

(right-click and open image in new tab to zoom in)

Let's break down what the chart shows:

The blue line in the top panel shows the price of the S&P 500 index.

The black line in the middle represents the consecutive days the S&P 500 had more decliners than advancers.

The red line at the bottom represents the percentage of S&P 500 stocks at 1-month lows.

The Takeaway: Yes, breadth appears weak at first glance, as the data indicates that more stocks have been declining than advancing over the past 8 trading days.

Looking back at history, we can see that this period of poor breadth has occurred three other times over the past two decades.

All three times were amid bear markets and record-high spikes in one-month new lows.

Currently, we are just 0.6% below all-time highs...

REV Group is a leading manufacturer of specialty vehicles like fire trucks, street sweepers, school buses, and more. 

They provide every type of vehicle a municipality needs. Sounds like a good business, right?

In the past few years, the company has been trying to divest from several segments, such as school buses, because of slowing sales growth and margin compression. 

Instead of school buses, they've aggressively leaned into the fire and emergency vehicle segments. This has boosted profitability, and the market loves it!

REVG just closed at a fresh all-time high on the heels of a mixed report:

As you can see, the market punished the stock for reporting earnings during its prior drawdown from 2018-2020. 

In the nearly five years since it made its all-time low and embarked on a new uptrend, the market has rewarded the stock for reporting 65% of the time.

What's more important to us is this quarter's report was the catalyst for resolving a multi-year accumulation pattern.

Are you adding fire truck exposure to your portfolio? Let me know 🙉

Thank you for reading.

Below is the 10th ASC Mastermind  Course. In this video, I discuss how to profit from short squeezes.

I love short squeezes. I love how they happen, I love how they're somewhat misunderstood, and most importantly, I love to profit from them. 

That's why we created an entire scan to identify stocks with potential short squeezes. 

Most people think looking for a short squeeze is as simple as looking for stocks with the highest short interest. But we know there's a little more nuance than that. In reality, there are multiple components to a short squeeze.

In this video, I review the three parts of a short squeeze (why they happen), how we find these stocks, and how we analyze them to ultimately profit. 

Enjoy.

With large-cap tech gaining momentum, semiconductors have set the stage for a year-end rally.

The Equal-Weight Semiconductors ETF $XSD offers a valuable lens into the overall health and performance of this critically important subsector.

Unlike traditional cap-weighted benchmarks, XSD provides a much broader view of what’s going on with these stocks. And right now, it’s telling us everything is good with semis.

Currently, the ETF is testing the upper limits of a big basing pattern, following a prior breakout attempt that failed a few months ago.

Our volatility squeeze indicator is accelerating higher, suggesting a big move is brewing.

If XSD can hold above its prior cycle highs, it can only be a bullish development and a big plus for the broader market.

And if...

"First they scare 'em out, then they wear 'em out."

That's a famous old Wall Street saying. And I agree with it 100%.

In Bitcoin, the "scare" post-100K might not have been that scary (or maybe it's yet to come?), but it definitely feels like we're in the "wear 'em out" phase right now.

And my gut tells me the next move higher will catch the chasers by surprise. That's what I want to position for.