An All Star Options community member recently sent me an email asking about the Average True Range (ATR) indicator and whether or not it is helpful in ascertaining if options premiums are elevated or depressed in the underlying instrument. 

For a pretty thorough explanation of what ATR is, here’s a blurb I found on macroption.com:

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

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Bryant R. Riley, chairman and CEO of B. Riley Financial $RILY.

Riley reported a purchase of $2.5 million worth of RILY stock.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Another gap lower for the indices this morning. I'll be watching to see if the $SPX can hold 3,861 or so.

I was looking for a gap down. Now we'll see if we can get a bounce.

With the major indexes below overhead supply, you're seeing the choppy action.

There are stocks continuing to do very well, like Homebuilders for example. And there are some stocks really struggling, like U.S. Banks.

But in the aggregate, at the index level, you're seeing the grind.

It's the weekly bond market edition of What the FICC?

Today we're highlighting the breakout in bonds.

Check it out!

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

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market opened lower and continued on that path all day.

It was a tough day, and I tried to manage risk.

The $SPX hit some support at 3,887. The next level down is 3,867.

This is the video recording of the December 15th, 2022, Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche.

12/15/22 2:00 PM ET

These are the registration details for our Live Mid-month Conference Call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

Our next Live Call will be held on Tuesday December 20th at 6PM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.

Here are the details for Tuesday night:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @Ianculley  

"Trade what’s in front of you."

We say it all the time.  And it sounds simple enough.

But, with an immense amount of information circulating, it can be difficult to distinguish what’s important. 

That’s why we focus on price. Price filters the noise and useless data.

At the end of the day, it's price that pays. 

So, if bonds are breaking out to fresh multi-month highs, we should buy bonds, right?

Here’s a quick look at the bond market buy signals triggered earlier in the month: 

All three are still in play.

The five, 10-, and 30-year Treasury futures continue to churn above our risk levels. As long as that’s the case, we want to remain long toward our upside objectives...

One of the great things about options trading is the flexibility afforded to traders to combine multiple contracts, of the same or differing expirations, long or short, to express unique ways to participate in whatever thesis we might have about the future direction or opportunity the market is offering.

Depending on the type of trader and person we are, this menu of choices available either incredibly excites us, or it overwhelms us with analysis paralysis.

I usually fall into the first camp, excited about the choices. But I'll admit to sometimes feeling myself unable to make a confident strategy decision.

So when opportunities like today's trade come along, I get pumped. This is because today's trade is my favorite kind of setup. Both for the potential of the move and the simplicity in how we can play it!

Regardless of whether the majority of stocks in the market are going up or down, there seems to always be a group that just wants to keep on falling in price.

They can't help themselves.

Investors just hate them.

And with that hatred, of course, comes opportunity.

Here's this week's shit list:

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

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @AlfCharts

We're still picking our spots selectively when it comes to long ideas on our Inside Scoop list.

However, every now and then, some secular leaders pop up on our scan, offering us nice entries and favorable risk-reward ratios.

We're always looking for ways to gain exposure to these outperformers.

Today, we have two industry bellwethers and household names that recently broke out to new highs relative to the broader market.

Let's take a look at these leaders now.

There's no denying we've been on the sidelines for the longest time.

Equity markets have stalled at logical resistance zones, while the greenback looks primed to experience a mean-reversion rally. At the same time, Bitcoin $BTC, Ethereum $ETH, and most altcoins are either below their June lows or messy at best.

It's no surprise crypto stocks continue to slide and now trade at year-to-date lows.

What a tragic sector...

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by the early stage life sciences investment firm Atlas Venture.

The venture capital fund now owns a total stake in Dyne Therapeutics $DYN of more than 17%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market is continuing yesterday's slide after Fed Chair Powell’s speech.

For today, I'm watching the 21-day moving average on $SPY at 396.40. We're slightly below it.

We debuted a new scan which goes by the name- All Star Momentum.

All Star Momentum is a brand new scan that guides us toward the very best stocks in the market. We have incorporated our stock universe of Nifty 500 as the base this time around. Among the 500 stocks that we follow, this scan will pump out names that are most likely to outperform the market.

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...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw a lot of volatility after the FOMC meeting today.

We dropped below $SPX 4,000 before quickly bouncing back.