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

As technicians, we pride ourselves on never being dogmatic in our approach. If new data that invalidates our initial thesis presents itself, we're always willing to flip our approach.

Yesterday, we wrote that Ethereum testing a significant support zone suggests this rally is mean-reverting in nature. In that same breath, though, we noted that it's wise to treat every chart on its own merits.

If you adopt an overly broad picture of markets, you'll often miss some of the most straightforward trading opportunities.

With all that said, a few names are shaping up nicely in this tape.

Our list is full of insider buys by company CEOs today.

The largest insider transaction is a Form 4 filing by the CEO of Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company $BHVN, Vlad Coric.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

October turned out to be a decent month for the overall market.

Let's see what November brings.

From the Desk of Steve Strazza @sstrazza and Alfonso Depablos @Alfcharts

This is one of our favorite bottom-up scans: Follow the Flow.

In this note, we simply create a universe of stocks that experienced the most unusual options activity — either bullish or bearish, but not both.

We utilize options experts, both internally and through our partnership with The TradeXchange. Then, we dig through the level 2 details and do all the work upfront for our clients.

Our goal is to isolate only those options market splashes that represent levered and high-conviction, directional bets.

We also weed out hedging activity and ensure there are no offsetting trades that either neutralize or cap the risk on these unusual options trades.

What remains is a list of stocks that large financial institutions are putting big money behind.

And they’re doing so for one reason only: because they think...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended October 28, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated with our 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...

Once Bitten - Twice Shy

Beyond the mega-cap earnings-related blow-ups of last week, the rally off of the mid-October lows quietly gained strength. At Friday’s close, more than 55% of S&P 500 stocks were trading at new 20-day highs. In our work, that is a breadth thrust - the first since July and only the second since June 2020.

More Context: After stocks were uncharacteristically weak following the July breadth thrust, investors may be more cautious about embracing the latest signal. In this environment it is entirely possible that breadth thrusts are more evidence of volatility than strength. Over the course of my career I have tended to “trust the thrust”, but also believe it is a case of “thrust, but verify.” 

We take a Deeper Look at what we have seen during the fear-fueled bounce off of the October lows and how that could morph into a strength-sustained rally.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Today was a nice consolidation day, with the indices just chopping around. If the indices can continue to trade sideways, we can hopefully work off overbought levels.

I'd like $SPX 3,835 to hold if this market wants to trend higher.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our Top 10 Charts Report was just published.

In this weekly note, we highlight 10 of the most important charts or themes we're currently seeing in asset classes around the world.

Insurance Claims a Leadership Role

The Equal Weight SPDR Insurance ETF(KIE) just closed at its highest level since April. One thing we know about relative strength is that the stocks and indexes that hold up best during bear markets tend to be the first to make new highs when the selling pressure subsides. We think this group will continue to outperform in the future as it completes a failed head & shoulder top and is only 3% from fresh all-time highs.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Check out this week's Momentum Report, our weekly summation of all the major indexes at a Macro, International, Sector, and Industry Group level.

By analyzing the short-term data in these reports, we get a more tactical view of the current state of markets. This information then helps us put near-term developments into the big picture context and provides insights regarding the structural trends at play.

Let's jump right into it with some of the major takeaways from this week's report:

* ASC Plus Members can access the Momentum Report by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.

Macro Universe:

• This week, our macro universe was positive as 83% of our list closed higher with a median return of 2.11%.
• The Dow Jones Transports $DJT was the winner again, closing with a 6.95% gain.
• The biggest loser was Lumber $LB with a weekly loss of -13.36%.
• There was no change in the percentage of assets on our list within 5% of their 52-week highs – currently at 6%.
• 60% of our macro list made fresh 4-week highs.
...

Our commodities analyst Ian Culley couldn't have said this any better:

Energy stocks refuse to lose.

We can’t deny the relative strength of the energy space, whether we’re talking about stocks or commodities. But it’s been equities over the raw materials for months now.

They just continue to grind.

Today's trade takes us to Midland, Texas, home of the Permian Basin -- one of the richest deposits of oil and gas in the world.

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

Mean reversion is a universal element of the world we live in.

Reversion to the mean is a statistical phenomenon stating that the greater the deviation of a variable from its mean, the greater the probability that the next measured variation will deviate less.

In other words, an extreme event is likely to be followed by a less extreme event.

In financial markets, mean reversion is everywhere. This is especially the case in bear markets when prices dramatically rally following prolonged periods of sustained weakness.

As John Roque, one of the GOATs of technical analysis, would say, "We’re not in a reversion to the mean business. This is instead a reversion beyond the mean business."

Specifically, asset prices retracing to their statistical average isn't the rule, it's the exception. Rather, in most cases, asset prices will often overshoot their "averages."

With crypto markets bouncing over the last week, it raises the question, is this just yet another mean reversion rally, or does this move have some legs?

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Happy Halloween!

They pinned the close on Friday on the $SPX at 3,900. The "W" pattern I spoke about a month back seems to be in play. We have resistance now at 3,945.

The largest insider buy on today's list is a Form 4 filing by CD&R Boulder Holdings LP.

The firm disclosed the purchase of approximately $6 million worth of shares in Beacon Roofing Supply $BECN.

For so long it had been Bigs over Smalls.

People would even complain that it was only 5 stocks driving market returns.

Do you remember how hilarious that was?

Good, because it's so much funnier now.

Get this, those same people complaining that only 5 stocks were driving the market higher are now complaining that those 5 stocks aren't participating.

Market returns are currently being driven by all the other stocks. Those 5 big massive ones are doing their very best to hold the market down, but it's not working.

Investors are buying stocks, whether you like it or not. And they're buying the smaller ones at a much faster rate than their larger-cap counterparts.

Look at the Small-cap Russell2000 hitting new Year-to-Date highs vs the Large-cap S&P500.

And of course Small-caps are also hitting new 16-month...

There are 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

This is the most important stock market index, both currently and of all-time.

In case you missed my explanation, you can catch up here.

Of the 30 stocks, 5 of them are already at New All-time Highs (2 more that are no longer in the Dow also closed at New All-time Highs).

And several more Dow Components are just a few percentage points away.

New all-time highs are NOT a characteristic of downtrends.

An expansion in new highs is NOT weak breadth.

Here's a Dow component that has been basing for a while. ...

These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Monday November 7th @ 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 Monday evening:

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

Thanks for all the great comments and emails.

I'm glad to hear how well you guys are doing in this environment.

But keep in mind that not everyone looks at the market the way you and I do.

Some people out there think the Dow Jones Industrial Average is beneath them.

Some people like to pretend to be smart and wait for computers to tell them if stocks are going up, instead of just counting.

Price weighted indexes don't seem to be good enough for some of their ...

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.