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The market’s a rollercoaster right now.

Big moves. Wild swings. Sentiment flipping on a dime.

Intraday ranges are wide, and positions can move fast.

The CBOE Volatility Index $VIX just closed above 45 for three straight sessions this week.

That’s only happened three times in the past 30 years:

🔻 2008 (Great Financial Crisis)

🔻 2020 (Covid)

🔻 2025 (Today)

We’re in an extremely high-volatility environment.

And with the VIX this elevated, here’s a rule of thumb:

VIX ÷ 16 = the expected daily move in the S&P 500.

So, with a ~40 VIX, expect at least a 2.5% per day—in...

Here's the replay and chartbook from the April 10 Weekly Strategy Session.

Be sure to join us on Thursdays at 11 am ET and maximize your return potential.

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

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

Let’s dig in!

I'll be back from a nice family vacation later today and will be LIVE on The Morning Show Friday morning.

Miami is fantastic this time of year. I highly recommend a good vacation, if that's something that you can afford to do.

There was a time in my life that I couldn't afford this kind of thing, so it makes me appreciate it so much more. Many of you already understand this. Some of you will one day.

I wanted to check in and share a few things I've been thinking about while I've been away this week.

One thing that certainly stands out is just how great it is to stay off twitter while you're way with your family.

If you want to make sure you're a bad father, one way to solidify that is to spend all your time tweeting during family vacations. 

I kid. But this is definitely a luxury that I couldn't understand in my younger days. 

There is an incredible team at...

Insider activity was fairly quiet overall, but a significant buy at Nike Inc $NKE dwarves the day’s other transactions.

📌 The most notable insider activity from yesterday’s filings came from the boardroom of Nike $NKE, where Director Bob Swan disclosed a $502,756 purchase.

📌Chairman Mitchell Jacobson filed a Form 4 revealing a $11.1 million purchase in MSC Industrial Direct Co $MSM.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 9, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 Last but not least, NexPoint Residential Trust $NXRT CFO Paul Richards stepped in with a $193,275 open-market purchase—always a signal worth tracking when it comes from the chief financial officer.

Welcome to the 2nd earnings season of 2025!

We're only 10 calendar days into Q2, but so far, there have been a ton of fireworks.

From Trump's "Obliteration Day," last week, to his pivot yesterday, we know one thing's certain...

There's no telling what'll come next.

Right now, more than ever, it's paramount to stay open-minded.

Without further ado, let's talk about the 1st big earnings report of this quarter.

*Click the image to enlarge it

Delta Air Lines $DAL reported mixed results and had a muted reaction score. 

Yes, the stock was up over 20%...

But it's important to put that in context. Yesterday was a day for the history books.

The company reported revenues of $12.98B, which matched Wall Street's estimate, and earnings per share of $0.46, versus the $0.38 estimate. 

Now let's dive into the data and talk about what happened with this report 👇

Delta...

It's an incredibly fast moving market out there.

The S&P 500 just recorded its third best day on record - it's best since 2008!

In these markets, correlations spike to 1. In other words, as everything crashes, everything is basically trading together. Even the ETFs on our thematic list, despite being very different, are trading very similarly.

Yesterday signaled that the worst is behind us in the very near term. But what remains to be seen is how this story will progress as the U.S. retaliates against China.

These aggressive moves are very typical for bear markets, and looking out longer-term the risk is certainly still elevated in owning equities.

Today's number is... 3rd

Yesterday's daily move of +9.5% for the S&P 500 was its third-best day going all the way back to the 1950s.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The blue line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
• The green & red lines in the bottom panel is the daily percentage change.
• The table showcases the forward returns for the top 20 best days for the S&P 500.

The Takeaway: If you have been following my daily notes this week, you would have seen on Monday that I noted that a massive back-to-back price drop could indicate that we had reached a market bottom. On...

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Today was one of the most epic sessions in the history of the stock market.

Amid rumors around tariffs, the S&P 500 ripped higher, closing up 9.5% on the day.

That makes it the third-largest one-day gain for the index going all the way back to 1950.

Moves like this aren't just rare… they are historic.

You can count on one hand how many times the S&P has rallied more than 9% in a single session in the last 75 years.

The green dots in this chart show these historical rallies.

Only during the depths of the Great Financial Crisis, have we seen stronger gains:

• October 13, 2008: +11.6%
• October 28, 2008: +10.8%
...

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Today marked the best day for the market since the financial crisis.

I barely remember it. I was still in college.

For some indexes, it was even the best day since the dot-com bust.

I definitely don’t remember that.

Some old souls will tell you someone like me doesn’t have the experience to navigate through an environment like this.

But I think I’m better equipped for it than they are.

I haven’t been broken by past bear cycles. I don’t get psyched out by them. I’m not jaded and I’m not afraid. I just follow the data. 

I’ve been the guy saying bearish things all year...

Thanks to everyone who joined us for today's Hot Corner Insider Weekly Strategy Session.

These feel like unprecedented times. And when that happens, we need new tactics. New tools. New mindsets.

Today, I'm beginning a campaign of undetermined length, in an attempt to harvest some of these monster options premiums.

Seven days after Liberation Day things are working out just about as expected in the equity markets. Chaos!

Until this afternoon's 90 day delay announcement every rally met supply. Rumors were quickly squashed and the White House vowed to hold the line on anything other than full victory. And just like that, there was a 90 day delay. Would it have been easier to just delay the tariffs 90 days in the first place? Stop overthinking it.

We have 90 days and have undone a lot of the damage done over the last week. It's a welcome piece of new news and one of the items on the 3-step Wish List I shared with Spencer earlier this week. But it doesn't change much. If you were over-levered this morning it might be time to take a little off the table and give thanks. Uncertainty will be back but for now it certainly is nice for stocks to be irrational in the other direction. 

Long-term, China, Vietnam and Indonesia are something of the Big Three in shoes and apparel. I believe but am not sure China and the US are still pushing a combined 200% tariff level. Let's just say a lot of merchants and vendors doing business in the mall are rooting for the Vietnam...

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

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

Let’s dig in!

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...

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives were active again, with Rep. Gilberto Cisneros of California disclosed purchases in a wide range of sectors. 

His filings included trades in:

📌 Ferguson $FERG;

📌 Johnson & Johnson $JNJ;

📌 PTC $PTC; and

📌 UnitedHealth $UNH.

Each disclosure fell in the $15,001-to-$50,000 range. While these aren’t massive trades individually, the diversification and consistent activity say a lot about where some lawmakers see opportunity.

📌 Rep. Tony Wied also disclosed purchases in both Advanced Micro Devices $AMD and Trade Desk $TTD.

Here’s The Hot Corner, with data from April 8, 2025:

Click the table to enlarge it.

📌 On the institutional front, Apollo Global Management...

You can see the defensive rotation taking place as equity markets have sold off. Consumer staples and utilities are the two best areas of the market under our power rankings. Meanwhile, the poster child of the secular bull market, technology, is deep in the red.

A key chart to monitor is Consumer Staples $XLP priced in the S&P 500 $SPY. When this line is moving higher, it indicates that consumer staples are outperforming, which is a bearish signal.

Right now, the ratio is at a key inflection point.

I think with the indexes having retested their 2021 highs, the higher probability outcome is that consumer staples begin underperforming as money flows back into risk during an aggressive counter trend rally.

It's not often we see staples perform so well against the benchmark, and if this ratio were to continue ripping higher, it would be a cautionary signal to anticipate further downside in stocks.

Today's number is... 50%

More than 50% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are currently in oversold conditions.

Here’s the chart:

Let's break down what the chart shows:

• The blue line in the top panel is the S&P 500 index price.
• The black line in the bottom panel is the percentage of S&P 500 stocks oversold (Daily RSI14 less than 30) 
• The gray lines indicate when the percentage of S&P 500 stocks oversold crosses above 50.

The Takeaway: The recent environment has not encouraged risk-seeking behavior. We have now entered a phase where many risk assets have broken lower from topping formations and are now retesting prior cycle highs.

When we take a look under the hood, we find that over 50% of the stocks in the S&P 500 are now oversold (Daily RSI falling below 30). This level of oversold conditions has not been seen since the market crash of 2020.

So, I dug into the data to see what typically happens to the market when the majority of S&P 500 stocks become...