Below is the replay and slide deck for Week 1 of ASC Mastermind.

During today's internal Analyst meeting, JC said: "We should be doing more in China."

It's not something I often agree with. But today I do.

In fact, I've already got a couple positions on in stocks with China exposure, and I'm adding some more today.

And look at this performance of the China Large Cap ETF $FXI:

And the catch-up trade may be massive.

In today's Options Jam Session, I discuss this, as well as my thoughts on what's in store for the stock market in the coming 2-4 months.

Sean McLaughlin | Chief Options Strategist, All Star Charts

"We should be doing more in China." ~ JC Parets during this morning's internal Analyst meeting.

This, coupled with my feeling that we need to be more aggressive in the stock market right now as the potential profits on the upside could be quite meaningful, playing in China is as aggressive as it gets.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Welcome to The 2 to 100 Club.

In this scan, we look to identify the strongest growth stocks as they climb the market-cap ladder from small- to mid- to large- and, ultimately, to mega-cap status (over $200B).

Once they graduate from small-cap to mid-cap status (over $2B), they come on our radar. Likewise, when they surpass the roughly $30B mark, they roll off our list.

But the scan doesn't just end there.

We only want to look at the strongest growth industries in the market, as that is typically where these potential 50-baggers come from.

Some of the best performers in recent decades – stocks like Priceline, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, and myriad others – would have been on this list at some point during their journey to becoming the market behemoths they are today.

When you look at the stocks in our table, you'll notice we're only focused on Technology and Growth industry groups such as Software, Semiconductors, Online...

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

1. No new positions today.
2. Rolled GDX position to November options.
3. No positions were exited since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Here is the schedule for the ASC Mastermind course: 

Week 1 (Sept. 25): Defining Personal Objectives For Trading & Investing

Week 2 (Oct. 2): Why Momentum Trading Works

Week 3 (Oct. 9): How To Do Intermarket Analysis

Week 4 (Oct. 16): Using Relative Strength

Week 5 (Oct. 30): Sentiment & Seasonality

Week 6 (Nov. 6): Pattern Recognition

Week 7 (Nov. 13): Incorporating Moving Averages Into Your Analysis

Week 8 (Nov. 20): How To Really Make Money With Dividend Stocks

Week 9 (Nov. 27): Finding The Best Small-Cap Stocks

Week 10 (Dec. 4): Profiting Off Of Short Squeezes

Week 11 (Dec. 11): When Is It Too Late To Buy Mega-Caps?

Week 12 (Dec. 18): How To Find The Next $100 Billion Company

The most notable insider activity on today's list comes via a Form 4 filing by Control Empresarial de Capitales SA.

The investment firm revealed a purchase of 515,000 shares of PBF Energy Inc $PBF, equivalent to $16,391,491.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from September 24, 2024:

These last six months in the crypto market have reflected the utility of patience in trading. Because we view trading through a financial lens, we always assume that risk management is preventing financial loses. And as such, we integrate strategies to mitigate against such losses.

These include stop losses, invalidations, and hedging strategies.

And while these are imperative in preventing losses from spiraling out of control, there is another aspect that gets commonly overlooked.

And that is psychological risk management.

Just like our portfolio value, we need to maintain a healthy balance within our inner emotional and psychological wellbeing. When we have a prolonged stretch of losing money in the markets, it negatively weighs on our mind. As such, this can create a negative feedback loop whereby we make decisions without awareness of the emotions in behind them.

A common misconception in investing psychology is that we should block off emotions entirely. By running a trading system, it is said that this eliminates bias and emotion from the picture, allowing us to make objective decisions informed by data. However, what this approach fails to...

The precious metals market is heating up.

Gold has been making new all-time highs consistently since March and now Silver looks like it wants to join in on the fun. 

I think there is a major catchup trade brewing as silver threatens to resolve this multi-year basing pattern. In fact, it looks like it may already be underway.

Today it rallied nearly 5%, marking its best day since May, and closed at its highest level in over 10 years.

I love to see this kind of momentum on breakouts.

I also think gold has given us a beautiful roadmap for where silver is headed next.

The chart below shows the historical correlation between gold and silver.

As you can see, the two metals tend to move together, peaking and bottoming around the same time.

They also tend to follow similar patterns, just like the multi-year ranges that formed starting at the 2020 highs.

Gold already resolved higher back in the first quarter and is up about 27% since. 

Silver is resolving higher as we speak.

Considering the higher beta that silver carries, we think there's plenty room for upside from here.

We're buying silver and...

Precious metals continue to show strength as both gold and silver hit new highs in today's session.

First, it was gold leading the charge, and now silver is making its move.

Let’s take a look at this silver futures chart:

As you can see, silver is breaking out of a multi-year base, with momentum accelerating sharply to the upside.

After a failed attempt earlier this year, buyers are giving themselves another chance to push prices out of the box.

If this breakout sticks above $30, we want to be aggressively long not just silver, but the broader precious metals space.

There is a growing list of opportunities, as well as plenty of vehicles and various methods we can use to gain exposure and add leverage to this theme.

The options market is one way we can do it.

Strazza just put an options trade on a silver miner for Breakout Multiplier members this morning. If you're not already a member,...

A few years back, Robinhood made a big splash in the retail trading world by offering Commission-Free options trading.

Retail traders and the media that served them rejoiced! 

"This is a game-changer!" they shouted.

And in some ways it was. But not in the way you might think.

It changed the game for retail options brokers to be able to attract multitudes more sheep to get shorn. How?

For one thing, retail brokers are able to command top dollar from market-making firms who pay the brokers for the opportunity to take the other side of retail trades. This is called Payment for Order Flow (PFOF).

From Robinhood's August 7, 2024 earnings report:

In the first half of 2024, Robinhood earned substantial revenue from payment for order flow (PFOF), particularly from options trading.

In Q1 2024, options trading contributed $154 million to Robinhood’s transaction-based revenue, a 16% increase compared to the same period in 2023. This represented a significant portion of...

The dollar is weaker than you think. 

This is a major development in the forex market. And when we look under the hood, things are even worse than they appear for the greenback.

With more and more global currencies showing relative strength each day, it’s time to take a look at US dollar internals and see what’s moving. 

Relative strength is not just the cheat code for stocks, it also works for the currency market and everything else in between. 

We also learn a lot about the breadth of a given market through analyzing internals. This helps us determine how we want to position ourselves to make money. 

And right now, it looks like we should position ourselves for a lower dollar over longer time frames. 

The following table shows the US dollar is in, or moving toward, a bearish trend regime against most other major currencies.

As you can see, over 60% of currencies are in uptrends against the dollar… and this is now true on every timeframe we analyze. 

This is...

They can't even sell the Chinese stocks!

Chinese stocks!

The worst stocks on the planet. Yes those. They're even buying those.

That's what happens in bull markets. 

The CSI 300 is up over 4% overnight. This is the Chinese equivalent to the S&P500, which is now bouncing off support from Q1 and potentially putting in a historic double bottom:

Think about what this could mean to global markets, if even the worst stocks can't go down.

I mean, just look at the returns in China compared to the United States over the past 4 years, taking it back to before the prior cycle's peak.

Using this timeframe, you can really see the lack of recovery in China.

And I'm not just cherry picking the CSI 300 here.

It's just that this index is a good representation of the Chinese Market.

But if you want to compare that to the more popular China ETFs, you'll see the same thing, or worse.

While the CSI300 and China Large-cap 25 Index $FXI are only down 26% for this period, the China Technology ETF $CQQQ is down double that. So is Chinese Internet ETF $KWEB.

I...

The most notable insider activity on today's list comes via a Form 4 filing by Pilgrim Global ICAV.

The Irish investment advisory firm bought 750,000 shares of Sable Offshore Corp $SOC, equivalent to $15 million.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from September 23, 2024:

Gold futures have been relentlessly rising and printing new all-time highs. The precious metal is now overbought on a 14-day, week, and month RSI. 

We've recently seen Palladium rip over 20% in a few days and momentum thrusts for the Junior Gold & Silver Miners ETFs.

With this new Gold bull market now almost 7 months old, maybe it's time for Silver futures to break out of their multi-year range.

Let's talk about it:

Uncorrelated trades continue to pay off as an effective way to diminish portfolio risk in this messy market environment.

A few days ago, a trade was put on United States Natural Gas Fund ETF $UNG for Breakout Multiplier members. You can see the details here.

Fast forward to today, and the value of those options have doubled. This gives us and our members the opportunity to take half off the table and enjoy a free ride.

While we are able to reduce our risk in the trade, and always want to in these cases, we still like Natural Gas a lot… maybe even more than we did when we put the trade on initially.

Here’s a look at natty gas putting the finishing touches on a short-term bearish-to-bullish reversal within the context of a longer-term rounding bottom formation.

The recent rally has pushed...