A "tell" is an observable, consistent, unwitting behavior in reaction to a known stimulus. Which is a fancy way of stating something you already understand intuitively. 

Examples: You try on a new, hot outfit to model for your partner. You twirl before them, asking for an opinion. The love of your life looks you over squinches up their nose almost, but not quite imperceptibly. "You look amazing, babe" they offer with what is intended to be a sincere tone but is in the same tone they use to compliment your mom. This is the love of your life. The words mean nothing compared to the signals given off by the Tells of tone and expression. You change.

Example Two (The Point): Three stocks, all dominant in their respective corners of the consumer world, all beaten down mercilessly. All three had what should have been, could have been and in a better tape would have been bullish catalysts over the weekend.

Best Buy, Dicks and Nike are all down over 20% in the last 2 months. They are companies of varying quality in terms of execution but Supply Chain positioning but they dominate consumer segments which have been beaten like Government Mules over the ever-changing...

When there's market volatility, brokers and exchanges thrive.

And that's exactly what we're seeing right now.

Goldman Sachs $GS just reported their Q1 2025 results, and they were incredible.

Their equities segment grew to $4.19B, which is an astounding 27% year-over-year increase.

CEO David Solomon said in the conference call, "Clients are active and people are shifting positions." 

This is putting money in Goldman's pockets.

Let's talk about what else happened with Monday's earnings reactions.

*Click the image to enlarge it

Goldman Sachs $GS had the best earnings reaction and reported a double beat with a muted reaction score of 0.09. 

The company reported revenues of $15.06B, versus the $14.77B estimate, and earnings per share of $14.12, versus the $12.32 estimate. 

M&T Bank $MTB had the worst earnings reaction and reported a double miss with a reaction score of -0.79. 

The company reported revenues of $2.31B, versus the $2.34B estimate, and earnings per share of $3.32, versus the $3.40 estimate....

The standout story from today’s list is the buying spree by Rep. Jefferson Shreve of Indiana.

Rep. Shreve went big, snapping up a massive number of shares across several stocks.

Here's the breakdown:

• Advanced Micro Devices $AMD
• Blackrock $BLK
• Block Inc $XYZ
• Unitedhealth Group $UNH
• Wells Fargo & Co $WFC
• McDonald's Corp $MCD
• Newmont Corp $NEM
• Target Corp $TGT
• Goldman Sachs $GS
• Home Depot Inc $HD
• Johnson & Johnson $JNJ
• Broadcom Inc $AVGO
• Apple Inc $AAPL

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 14, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

Liberty 77 Fund L.P. dropped $6.99 million for Lions Gate $LGF.A, the biggest single Form 4 buy of the day, indicating continued...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average $DIA has migrated to the top of the list in the aftermath of the recent market crash.

The Dow, like so many other key indexes, have held the retest of their 2021 highs.

This suggests a strong level of support, indicating that the worst of the correction is likely behind us. While the market often consolidates or moves sideways after such events, this appears to be a constructive bottom - one we can build on with cautious optimism.

Today's number is... 50%

More than 50% of stocks listed on the NYSE reached 52-week lows last week.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The black line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
• The red lines in the bottom panel show the percentage of NYSE stocks making 52-Week New Lows.

The Takeaway: The stock market can only decline with an expansion in the new lows list, it's simple math… and you know what… The number of stocks making new lows expanded to its fourth-highest level over the past 17 years.

That's expansion!

No two ways about it…

Last week, among the 2,862 stocks listed on the NYSE, 1,475 made new 52-week lows…

That's over half of the stocks that are listed on the NYSE exchange! 

These are not levels you see during a bull market.

Moving forward from here, the Bulls must first stop stocks from declining. They have been trying to put something together, but have yet to show any type of back-to-back follow-through just yet. 

Is there...

Gold Miners are ripping in 2025 as Gold futures continue to print fresh all-time highs.

Here's how the year has played out so far:

• The S&P 500 is down 8%
• Bitcoin is down 9%
• Bonds are flat
• Silver is up 12%
• Gold is up 22%
• And Gold Miners are up 47%

There has been a tremendous amount of dispersion in the returns.

Despite precious metals' clear leadership role this year, the short sellers have piled into the Gold miners.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the two weeks ended April 11th, 2025. This report is published bi-weekly, in rotation with The Minor Leaguers.

What we do here is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.

We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names.

There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: a list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Whether we’re measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers, there’...

Since volatility picked up in early March, I’ve found that shorter-term trades have really started to shine.

Take a look at this snapshot of my recent trades in All Star Options:

With only a couple of exceptions, nearly every trade I’ve put on lately has had no more than two months until expiration—and the majority are even shorter than that.

Why?

Because when the market starts acting like it’s had too much coffee and not enough sleep, long-dated trades become harder to trust. Shorter-duration setups, on the other hand, let me be nimble. I can lean into fast-moving setups, take my profits (or manage risk quickly), and move on.

And it’s working.

These quicker-turn trades have noticeably increased my win rate and put some much-needed green back into the account—right when the broader market has been having a bit of a meltdown.

A few things to note in the above screenshot:

The green rows are completed trades that hit profit targets or closed with gains.

The red ones, obviously, are stop-outs for losses.

The white rows are still open positions—but most are...

Since there seems to have been a bit of confusion about the $QQQ campaign that I embarked upon back on Wednesday, I'm creating a new post to help make new trades clearer for you all.

So far this AM, I've closed one of our put spreads at my profit target, and I'm adding a new one.

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

1. New position in TLT.
2. No adjustments are needed today.
3. No exits since the last report.
4. Current status of open campaigns.
5. Volatility Snapshot.

Let’s dig in!

Another day of notable purchases spans restaurants, airlines, and biotech. Meanwhile, we have fresh 13D and 13G filings in packaged foods and more.

📌 Cracker Barrel $CBRL

Bay Resource Partners put $2.43 million into the iconic restaurant chain, as shares trade at lows not seen since 2009. 

📌 Delta Air Lines $DAL

Director David S. Taylor disclosed a $601,174 purchase, a solid endorsement of the airline amid ongoing industry volatility.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 11, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 Viridian Therapeutics $VRDN

Commodore Capital LP filed a 13G revealing an increase in ownership from 3.03% to 5.30%. 

As the narratives regarding tariffs...

We just heard from some of the largest financial institutions in the world, like JPMorgan Chase & Co. $JPM, BlackRock $BLK, and Wells Fargo & Co. $WFC.

3 out of 5 reported double beats, and 2 reported mixed results.

The market rewarded 4 out of 5 for their reports, but 3 out of 5 had negative reaction scores.

Jamie Dimon, one of the most powerful and influential financiers in the world, said the following about the current macro environment:

"The economy is facing considerable turbulence, with the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation and the potential negatives of tariffs and 'trade wars,' ongoing sticky inflation, high fiscal deficits, and still rather high asset prices and volatility."

In other words, he's not bullish...

Let's talk about what else happened with these reports.

*Click the image to enlarge it

Fastenal $FAST had the best earnings reaction and reported mixed results with a reaction...

Today's number is... 42nd

The 10-week moving average of the S&P 500 has fallen below the 40-week moving average for the 42nd time since 1950.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The black line is the S&P 500 index price.
• The blue line is the 10-week moving average of the S&P 500 index price.
• The red line is the 40-week moving average of the S&P 500 index price.
• The gray lines highlight when the 10-week moving average crosses below the 40-week moving average - Also known as a Death Cross.
• The table showcases the forward returns of the S&P 500 following a Death Cross.

The Takeaway: The trend is your friend until it bends, and the S&P 500 has been in an uptrend for the past 115 weeks.

But that changed last week when the S&P 500 experienced a Death Cross, which adds to the evidence in favor of Bears.

But what exactly is a Death Cross?

A Death Cross is a technical indicator that occurs when a short-term moving...

The prevailing theme on the international front has been the rotation taking place out of the United States and into a wider set of global markets.

We've seen significantly elevated volatility, and there's now a strong case to be made that the worse is behind us. Many key U.S. indexes have retested their 2021 highs and have firmly held.

Now the question has become - will international still outperform if risk markets recover from here?

A key chart to watch on this front is Europe $VGK versus the United States $VOO.

When this black line is going up, it means that Europe is outperforming the U.S. (as has been the case for a few months).

Right now, the ratio is at a key inflection point. If we see this ratio take out its most recent lows, it would indicate that money is rotating back into the United States.

The ratio will be a key chart to watch when understanding the leadership of the next bullish phase.

I have some personal news to share with you.

This announcement is 15 years in the making. And I’m grateful to all of you that I’m able to make it. 

Ladies and gentlemen, 2024 was my last year as Chief Market Strategist at All Star Charts Research.

Many of you were with me when I started writing a blog from my apartment in New York City in 2010. I was 28 years old then – just a kid trying to figure it out.

You were with me too when we turned the blog into a research company. We’ve added some of the top technicians in the game today to our team.

And All Star Charts is now one of the greatest technical analysis research companies in the history of the stock market.

I’m really proud of what we’ve built together. The team that I’ve assembled has helped me make decisions about what I do with my money for many years.

So I’m equally proud to share that Steve Strazza – my right-hand man and the Director of Research for the last five years – was named Chief Market Strategist at Allstarcharts earlier this year.

Steve has played an instrumental role in our success at All Star Charts. No single person on Earth is more qualified to take...

One of the most reliable signals of market stress isn’t in the headlines—it’s in swap spreads.

Swap spreads measure the difference between what banks pay to swap interest rates (SOFR) and what the U.S. government pays to borrow (Treasuries). When that spread collapses, like it just did, something’s breaking.

• In 2008, swap spreads collapsed before Lehman.
• In March 2020, they broke again when the Treasury market froze.

Both times, the Fed stepped in.

This week, the 30-year swap spread hit a record low last week. Translation? Dealers are under pressure. Liquidity is vanishing.

Chart from Kevin Muir from The Macro Tourist

Here’s the real story:

Pension funds use swaps to hedge rates while keeping cash free for private investments. Banks hedge those swaps by buying Treasuries—but capital requirements limit how...

What's this "reaction score" we're always talking about?

It's how we statistically measure how significant an earnings reaction was.

We've tried many different methods, but this is the best way. Trust us, we've done the work...

In this post, we want to teach you how to calculate the reaction score on TradingView.

You can save this as a template in TradingView, so you only need to set it up once.

First, add the rate of change indicator with the length set to 1 and base it on the closing price.

Next, right-click on the ROC indicator (we use the default TradingView indicator) and select Add Indicator/Strategy on ROC.

From there, search for the Z-Score script (we use the script from jwammo12), make the length 252 periods, and calculate based on 1 standard deviation.

Here's what it should look like:

Now that we have the template, we can calculate the reaction score for any stock.

Here's how we do it...

In a spreadsheet, we take the z-score from the S&P 500 and subtract the stock...

Sign up for my free note here.

Markets are back in rally mode, and crypto always gives us a good hint as to where things are headed coming into the new week.

Bitcoin, Solana, and friends had a good Saturday session and even repaired some tactical trend damage.

We’ve been discussing various areas of relative strength on our special live streams since last week.

Crypto has been one of them, and the best tokens continue to hold and bounce off key levels.

In fact, I think the potential failed top setups in Ripple and Solana are as good as anything out there right now.

I’m long both for a swing trade and maybe more. We’ll see how things go.

Here is Solana $SOL:

After quickly breaching 120, which has acted as support a good ten times in the past year, SOL just jumped back above this key level and confirmed a bullish...