From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I recently outlined five reasons to bet on energy.

While I stand by my line of reasoning, I did manage to leave out one overarching theme. And it’s an important one!

It’s a market theme that’s played out for almost three years, extending beyond energy to encompass commodities as an asset class.

I’m talking about the commodity-bond ratio…

Commodities relative to bonds was the most impactful high-level chart headed into 2021.

A major trend reversal favoring raw materials over US treasuries signaled a new, wild world on the horizon – a world characterized by inflation and rising interest rates. 

This shift in relative strength caught many investors off guard as commodities also outpaced stocks for the first time in over a decade.

Shockingly, commodities were back in the conversation as analysts struggled to deem the energy space a viable investment. (As if the price charts didn’t provide ample evidence.) 

Meanwhile, energy stocks...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

We saw a decent bounce from the start of the day and then the market sat idle.

$SPY needs to be above 446.80 to really get going higher.

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

Our Hall of Famers list is composed of the 150 largest US-based stocks.

These stocks range from the mega-cap growth behemoths like Apple and Microsoft – with market caps in excess of $2T – to some of the new-age large-cap disruptors such as Moderna, Square, and Snap.

It has all the big names and more.

It doesn’t include ADRs or any stock not domiciled in the US. But don’t worry; we developed a separate universe for that. Click here to check it out.

The Hall of Famers is simple.

We take our list of 150 names and then apply our technical filters so the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Let’s dive right in and check out what these big boys are up to.

Here’s this week’s list:

*Click table to enlarge view

We filter out any laggards that are down -5% or more relative to the S&P 500 over the trailing month.

Then, we sort the remaining names by their proximity to...

The hunt for premium selling opportunities continues. And today's trade is in a name that is heavily weighted in the Home Construction sector ETF, where options premiums -- sector-wide -- are a bit more elevated than the rest.

Thankfully, October options expiration happens the week before this company releases its next quarterly earnings report, so we don't have any of that event risk to worry about.

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

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

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

The largest insider transaction on today’s list comes in a Form 4 filed by Broadwood Capital.

The hedge fund revealed a purchase of $7.8 million in STAAR Surgical Company $STAA, increasing its ownership stake to 18%.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It's been a very bumpy week, and now we need to see if the indices are going to head higher from here or pull in more.

$SPY support is at 440.

Stocks are messy these days.

The major indexes peaked in July and the new 52-week highs list topped out almost 2 months ago.

This is all perfectly normal market behavior for this time of the year. In fact, if markets were behaving any differently, then THAT would actually be unusual.

Just like over the past 3 quarters. If stocks didn't do as well as they did, again, that would have been weird.

The market continues to behave according to historical trends, obnoxiously so.

And to be clear, it's when the market ignores seasonal tendencies that we want to pay more attention,...

While in the process of preparing for this week’s live Options Jam Session, I came across an open trade in $HMC that has been performing quite well for us.

It reminded me that when I wrote about the trade back on May 15th for subscribers, I began the piece with this:

I’m filing today’s trade under the category of “Hard Trades.” Not because it’s particularly hard to execute or because it’s a complicated multi-legged spread. It won’t require an excessive amount of margin to get positioned nor is there any risk of unlimited losses.

It’s hard because people might look at the trading action of the past few days and think that it’s “gone too far” and “I should wait for a pullback.”

And traders who think that way may be right.

But here’s the thing: sometimes the best trades to get into are the best precisely because they are the “hardest” to pull the trigger on. And that’s where our opportunity is. Those of us who fight through the conventional wisdom of average traders and get positioned ahead of the crowd will be lifted later on by those same traders...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market pulled in for yet another day.

We'll see if we're flagging to head higher or to see 435 to 440 on $SPY.

Please keep in mind that my shorts are one-tenth of my long trades position-size-wise.

If I stay in a short position for a longer period of time, I add on pops and buy back till I complete the position.