From the Desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

When investing in the stock market, we always want to approach it as "a market of stocks."

Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks showing leadership and trending higher.

We may have to look harder to identify them depending on current market conditions. But there are always stocks that are going up.

The same can be said for weak stocks. Regardless of the environment, there are always stocks that are going down, too. 

We already have multiple scans focusing on stocks making all-time highs, such as Hall of Famers, Minor Leaguers, and the 2 to 100 Club.

We filter these universes for stocks that are exhibiting the best momentum and relative strength characteristics. 

Clearly, we spend a lot of time identifying and writing about leading stocks every week, via multiple reports.

Now, we're also highlighting lagging stocks on a recurring basis.

Welcome to the Short Report.

We...

There's only one thing you need to know about Bitcoin miners. That is, they're essentially long Bitcoin's price, short the hash rate, and short electricity prices.

Wonder why publicly traded Bitcoin miners have been laughable? It's because all these three are moving in the completely opposite direction.

One of the things that continues to really stand out to me is the relentless outperformance in Energy stocks, even in the midst of a major correction in Crude Oil.

You can see it perfectly in this chart. Energy stocks today are making new 52-week highs relative to Crude:

The bond market is the biggest and baddest market of them all.

All these crypto currencies can go to zero and no one who matters will care.

The entire pot industry can disappear tomorrow and it won't matter.

Small-cap stocks aren't relevant, from a systemic perspective.

Do you know what matters? The bond market.

And if there's real stress out there in financial markets, you are going to see it show up in bonds.

It's just math.

But a funny thing happened in Q2 this year. High Yield Credit spreads began to tighten.

If there was real stress, you would be seeing them widening.

In this chart below we're looking at lower lows in the S&P500 but higher lows in the ratio between Junk Bonds and US Treasury Bonds:

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The SPX futures are back above 3,700. That's a level I'd like to see maintained.

And I'd prefer SPX above 3712.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list is a Form 4 filing by the senior vice-president of Dave & Buster's Entertainment $PLAY.

This is the fourth Form 4 filing reported for Dave & Buster’s since last week.

This is the video recording of the October 2022 Mid-month Conference Call.

We discussed:

• The DJ Industrial Avg at the Pre-Covid Highs
• Fewer Stocks are making New Lows
• Small-caps, Mid-caps & Micro-caps diverging positively
• Sentiment is at a historic bearish extreme
• Credit Spreads tightening the past 4 months
• Negative Correlation Between US Dollar & Stocks intact
• Consumer Discretionary outpacing Staples
• Sector Level trends are improving
• Energy making new 52-week highs relative to Stocks
• Shorting these REITs and Software Stocks
• Industrials & Regional Banks making new 52wk relative highs
• More Bullish Options Activity in Occidental Petroleum
• Coal Stocks Setting Up For Breakouts
• Industrial Stocks ready to bounce
• Financials holding Support
• Copper/Gold ratio not confirming new highs in Yields
• 5 & 10/yr Breakevens peaked quarters ago
• Emerging Markets down near critical levels
• Seasonally the best time to buy stocks
• List of my favorite stocks to...

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

I don’t care what your favorite TikTok financial guru says: Trading isn’t easy.

The market has made this point again and again this year.

The market has also driven home another essential truth: Trends persist.

I talk about this approach quite a bit because I’m a trend-follower. It’s my favorite Dow Theory Tenet, and it's the foundation of my approach to the markets.

Trend-following might sound simple. But it’s far from effortless. Like any worthwhile philosophy, real-world applications can sometimes be a struggle. 

In fact, no other market has tested my trend-following resolve quite like this year’s unstoppable dollar. And I’m still looking for opportunities to get long…

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Today was more of a consolidation day for the market. I'd prefer that the SPX hangs onto 3,669, which it did (and hopefully does in the days ahead).

It would be nice if we saw the recent bottom become a tradable low from which we trend higher.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Feeling More Like The Financial Crisis

Mortgage rates are soaring and housing market conditions are deteriorating. Sentiment is sour in both the financial markets and the economy.

The Numbers: Expectations for home selling conditions are at a level that have been seen leading up to, through, and in the wake of the financial crisis. This isn’t an isolated report and its both sides of the market. Data from the University of Michigan shows that the fewest survey respondents since the early 1980’s see this as a good time to buy a house (and that was prior to the most recent spike in mortgage rates).

Why It Matters: Economic sentiment, whether on buying houses or CEO confidence, is usually self-fulfilling. This may seem to be at odds with the idea of using sentiment as a contrarian indicator, but it isn’t all that different. We can look at past sentiment extremes to gauge the possibility that moods have moved too far, but it takes bulls to have a bull market in the same...

It's that time of the quarter where we options swing traders need to be extra mindful of pending earnings releases. The last thing we want to do is place a directional bet in a stock or it's options heading into a binary event that could decapitate us in a heartbeat.

This is frustrating us right now because most of the charts we like best (both the bullish and bearish ones) are in stocks with earnings slated to be released in the next week or two.

During our morning Analyst meeting today, we discussed the fact that many of the banking/financial sector stocks have already reported earnings by now, therefore, this is a place we should look.

Specifically, we like the big money center mega/multinational banks that are represented best by the $KBE ETF. Here is a chart that paints a pretty good picture of why we like it:

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