"Old Economy" stocks are drawing our attention again.
Our Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza says: "these old economy stocks are all beating earnings and taking leadership roles" and he cites companies like Caterpillar $CAT, Deere $DE, as well as energies, homebuilders, and transportation stocks.
Today's trade is an expression of the continuation of this theme, and our target stock is offering us a nice pullback to enter into.
I dunno why, but thinking about train tracks and rail stocks got me thinking of Blue Steel. There is absolutely no connection between today's trade and the pose made famous by the Zoolander film. But, you're welcome.
While this certainly is not the market environment to be taking aggressive long bets in, there are some stocks that are displaying tremendous relative strength that we can play with strictly defined-risk positions to protect ourselves.
Our Young Aristocrats Report shows us stocks that aren’t just paying dividends but are doing so while they’re going up and thus paying us via price appreciation as well.
And this week's report serves up a great opportunity.
Here's a snippet that sums up a conversation I had with my Head Technical Analyst Steve Strazza this morning:
Me: Any trade ideas have you excited this morning?
Steve: Nothing. New lows everywhere today.
Me: I know. It's ugly.
Steve: I can give you a handful of nice charts that are breaking out, but they are all going to fail. Can't buy breakouts in this market.
Yep. That's where we're at. Putting on directional bets in either direction feels like a high risk proposition. Long breakouts are likely to fail, while short breakdowns are likely to get caught offsides in a wicked bear market dead cat bounce.
But this doesn't mean we're out of options to earn some profits. Options premiums remain elevated across the board, and we've got some areas with clean levels of support we can use as guiderails to sell some delta-neutral premium with higher-than-normal chances of success.
Put September and Q3 in the books. It was one to remember.
But we're turning the pages to October today and the rally in the markets is helping to reveal where the new strength may emerge for the next bull run, as well as some significant levels of support for beaten-down stocks and sectors.
Today's trade is fading the recent volatility against a key nearly year-long level of support in a sector that got badly beaten last month.
Premiums remain elevated in the options market as volatility persists and confusion among market participants reigns supreme.
We sold a delta neutral spread on Friday to take advantage of this environment. Today's trade will also be a credit spread, however, this time we will be taking on some bearish directional exposure to counterbalance some of our long exposure.
We recently closed an October Short Strangle in the Energy ETF $XLE at our profit target. The timing was pretty fortuitous, considering the wild ride all stocks have been on since the latest Federal Reserve interest rates announcement.
With volatility ticking backup up quite noticeably, $XLE has climbed back up near the top of my implied volatility list of ETFs, and the November options are priced in such a way that we can sell some pretty far out-of-the-money strikes increasing our odds of success.
I know this might be breaking news to some of you, but there are often great opportunities to be had in international stocks. And the All Star Charts International Hall of Famers report regularly serves up the best setups out there.
Today's trade comes directly from the most recent report, so let's board the airplane and head abroad!
Every week, the team publishes the Follow The Flow report which surfaces unusual options activity. This is a report I reference often, not because I want to do the same trades that surface in the scan, but when I can find a technical setup that I like that is supported by the options flow, this can often lead to a bit of alpha with my own options strategy.
However, in today's case, I think I may jump aboard with the unusual options buyers and play along with them in a small-cap oil tanker.
What a wild week, eh? On Tuesday, the rug got pulled on dip buyers with the latest inflation data point coming in hot, throwing a whole bunch of confusion into the market regarding the future of interest rates. Or, so I'm told.
The net result for us options traders is that there is once again some juicy options premium for us to sell into. And we've got a bunch of sloppy ETF charts that look primed for some net sideways actions over the near term.