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:

It wasn't long ago that we said Bitcoin was at the edge of the abyss.

A month on, the same can still be said about most of the asset class. Just go chart by chart, and you'll see a ton of coins sitting at their lows.

This is such an illiquid tape, with only the heartiest of HODLers remaining, that it wouldn't take much selling to send these laggards on another leg lower.

Cardano, Decentraland, Gala, Kyber, Polkadot -- just a little push is all it'd take...

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

I spoke in the live trading room yesterday about how $NFLX earnings, either good or bad, has not really affected the market recently.

The futures did bounce last night, but this morning we're roughly flat.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

The market gapped up this morning and came back to fill yesterday's high.

The market overall bounced off of that gap-fill and held steady until news came out on $AAPL late afternoon.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Over the past year, this old Wall Street saying has been more than an adage. It’s been a reality. Correlations across the ETFs that we use as proxies for various asset classes are overwhelmingly positive and on the rise. The exception has been Commodities (DBC), though many asset allocation conversations don’t even include commodities.   

Why It Matters: Elevated correlations have left investors with no places to hide as stocks enduring historic levels of volatility and weakness. 2022 has been a risk off environment where risk off assets have been as weak as risk on assets. Trying to navigate this backdrop has led to frayed nerves and impatience for the arrival of better times. Unfortunately this year has done little to show it deserves the benefit of the doubt so far.   

In taking a Deeper Look we put 2022 into context, review our indicators of risk behavior and highlight some areas where risk appetite may be improving.

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

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is working on its 3rd straight week of gains.

In case you missed it, you have to see the look on Maria Bartiromo's face after I told her Friday that we're 4 months into a new bull market.

Priceless.

I think she was into it though. Check out the full clip on Fox Business here: Mornings with Maria

This weekend I published a note about how underrated I find the Dow Jones...

You hear it every day.

Are you bullish or bearish?

Like, what does that question even mean?

Which asset class are we talking about?

What time frame?

What sector?

It's a question that only journalists should ask. People with skin in the game understand that strong opinions will always be weakly held when money is on the line.

Our opinion never matters. What does matter is how we adapt our approach as new evidence comes in that either corroborates or contradicts our initial thesis.