From the Desk of Ian Culley

It’s impossible to ignore – investors are reaching for risk.

Biotech stocks are catching higher. Copper futures are working on their tenth up-day in a row. Even the Emerging Market HY Bond ETF $EMHY is breaking to 7-month highs as it completes a multi-month base. 

And don’t forget about Silver! Gold’s crazy cousin has proven by far the best-performing asset since the US dollar peaked last fall. Strength among these market areas indicates a healthy risk appetite.

I can’t overlook these signs of a constructive bottoming process, especially considering the next chart…

Check out the Emerging Market Bond ETF $EMB relative to the US Treasuries ETF $IEF:

There’s plenty to unpack here…

I got a lot of feedback on my last letter where I suggested active traders need to stop trading Covered Call spreads for tactical trades and instead do a simple Naked Puts trade.

Thank you to everyone who engaged.

Anyway, here’s one question [edited to the important parts] I got from a reader where I thought my answer might be instructive to more of you:

Hi Sean,

I read your information on naked puts. When I intend to buy a stock, I would like to sell a put. I just don't know how to go about it. I just don't know where the strike price would be. I understand that I would have to buy the stock at that price (whether it is better or worse than hoped).

If you could give me an example that would help.

Cheers!

This is a great question, but one without a clear-cut answer. Here was my response:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

It was very whippy price action today in individual names.

We saw a lot of stop outs in the morning, then some recovery later on.

Forget cryptocurrencies. Look at these crypto stocks!

Seriously, some of these moves have been nuts.

We took a small long in MicroStrategy $MSTR at the lows, and it hit our 50%-plus target in just two weeks.

Crazy...

If cryptocurrencies are going to start trending higher -- which is our bet -- these stocks face serious resistance.

But let's approach this with a level head.

This is the video recording of the January 19th, 2023, Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche.

1/19/23 2:00 PM ET

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 next new position in our Paid-to-Play portfolio is:

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

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

As of this morning we filled a gap on $SPY at 390.65.

If we continue to stay below 390, there's potential to see 386. 

Today’s Hot List is a short one, as insider activity has cooled with the broader equity market this week.

The only insider transaction was a Form 4 filing by EcoR1 Capital LLC.

The underperformance out of U.S. Large-cap Growth indexes continues.

It's not the stock market's fault that the S&P500 has way too much exposure to large-cap growth.

And when we talk about "the stock market", there are countries outside of the United States that continue to shine.

Today's Chart of the Day shows the S&P500 hitting new 52-week lows relative to Developed Countries outside of North America: