Sometimes we traders overcomplicate things. With so many choices, so many moving parts, so many headlines, so many things vying for our attention on a minute by minute basis, it is easy to become overwhelmed.

It seems so obvious, but often the smartest -- yet the simplest -- thing to do is just keep investing in winners. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, right? And if we can construct options trades that take advantage of that momentum while defining our risks in case we happen to be the last suckers to pile in before the reversal -- then we should do that all day long and twice on Sundays, right?

With that in mind, today's trade is a momentum name that is no stranger to anyone who has been paying attention to hot names this year.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

From the desk of Louis Sykes @haumicharts

Welcome to this week's edition of Louis' Look where I give you the inside scoop on what I'm learning as an intern at All Star Charts. Last week I wrote about having a sense of humor in the financial world with a reference to the infamous John Cena pattern in stock of Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment.

Today I thought it'd be entertaining to step back from the lessons and bring five charts you have probably never seen, thought of, or come across.

I had a lot of fun writing this one, so let's get into it.

This is the video recording of the October 2020 Conference Call.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza and Louis Sykes @Haumicharts

At the beginning of each week, we publish performance tables for a variety of different asset classes and categories along with commentary on each.

Looking at the past helps put the future into context. In this post, we review the relative strength trends at play and preview some of the things we’re watching in order to profit in the weeks and months ahead.

In recent RPP Reports, we discussed how markets had become more of a mixed bag, particularly equities as they try to recover from September's selloff.

Although, with each passing week we're still seeing more bullish data points than bearish ones, even if only at the margin.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended October 16, 2020.

What we do 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.

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

The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.

This weekend was the annual Traders 4 A Cause event. The folks over there were nice enough to invite me to host the afternoon of day 1 and then come back to host the morning session on day 2. The catch was that I had to bring some of my friends to show off their skills and help raise money and awareness for breast cancer research, among other notable causes that they're supporting.

So I called up legends like Brian Shannon, Anne-Marie Baiynd, Phil Pearlman, Ryan Detrick, Denise Shull and others. It turned out to be a lot of fun and I know we raised a ton of money. So thank you for all the support!

You can still donate here

Here is my video with Howard Lindzon from the Sunday morning session.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Thanks to everyone for participating in this Week's Mystery Chart. It featured a nice base breakout that had extended higher and was digesting its gains near our Fibonacci extension levels.

When we posted the chart earlier this week, price was pressing up against its most recent objective near the 423.6% extension.

We posed the following question: will price correct lower and confirm the potential bearish momentum divergence, or would momentum catch up with price and confirm it's latest all-time highs.

Your responses were overwhelmingly bullish due to the strong uptrend and momentum characteristics... and we would agree.

These are the registration details for the live monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Monday October 19th 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 Monday:

The All Star Charts research team recently published our Quarterly Playbook for Q4. ASC subscribers can check it out here. And one of the highlighted semiconductor names has caught my attention for an opportunistic options trade.

Last week I was a guest on The Final Bar with my pal David Keller. Him and I always like to chat because we see the markets through a similar lens. We also have a lot of the same friends and we understand their perspectives as well.

In this video we kick it old school talking Dow Theory and Trend Identification. While things always seem to be changing and evolving in the market, the one constant is human behavior, fear and greed. That will never change. And therefore, the principles behind the study of those supply and demand dynamics don't change either.

We dive in around at the 12:41 mark. Check it out:

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?