From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We have the FOMC decision and Fed Chair Powell up at bat today.

I guess the market will be judging Powell's overall tone to see if and when the Fed will start to pivot.

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by the CEO of SoFi Technologies $SOFI, Anthony Noto.

Noto disclosed a $5 million purchase of SOFI shares.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

We held our December Monthly Strategy Session last week. Premium Members can access and rewatch it here.

Non-members can get a quick recap of the call simply by reading this post each month.

By focusing on long-term, monthly charts, the idea is to take a step back and put things into the context of their structural trends. This is easily one of our most valuable exercises as it forces us to put aside the day-to-day noise and simply examine markets from a “big-picture” point of view.

With that as our backdrop, let’s dive right in and discuss three of the most important charts and/or themes from this month’s call.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

November CPI came in better than expected, and the market was up over 2% at the open then drifted lower all morning.

The $SPY was up at 410 and dropped down to 399, roughly.

There was a lot of profit-taking, and a lot of good short ideas were out there to be had.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Futures are up big this morning. Now we'll see what the November CPI data brings this morning at 8:30 a.m. ET.

The $SPX futures are trading roughly at their 200-day moving average at 4,050.

The largest insider buy on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filing by Jeff Aronson.

Aronson revealed a purchase of roughly $1.2 million in GoHealth $GOCO.

It's that time of the year again.

The infamous Santa Claus rally is just around the corner.

And contrary to popular belief, it doesn't start until the end of next week.

The official period for the Santa Claus rally includes the last 5 trading days of the year and the first two of the following year.

Based on the 2022/2023 holiday schedule, that means this year's Santa Claus Rally begins on Friday December 23th and goes through Wednesday January 4th.

These 7 days have historically had a ridiculous track record, averaging over a 1.3% return for the S&P500 and coming in positive almost 80% of the time.

Since 1950, all other 7-day periods throughout the year only average 0.24% returns and were positive less than 60% of the time.

That's real alpha.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We're still range-bound, and tomorrow could potentially be a deciding factor on which way this market leads over the next few weeks.

$SPY is currently at 398, which is resistance.

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza.

Welcome back to Under the Hood, where we'll cover all the action for the week ended December 9, 2022. This report is published bi-weekly and rotated 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.

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.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

This is going to be a volatile week, with CPI data tomorrow and the Fed on Wednesday. Be on your toes, monitor your positions, and have your stops tight.

The indices are in a battle zone. The $SPX is trading between support and resistance. The pattern is tight. $SPY needs to get above 398 in order to head higher, simply put.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by Edward Joseph Shoen, president at AMERCO $UHAL.

Shoen revealed a purchase of UHAL worth roughly $16 million.