From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

“This Is A Test. This Is Only A Test.”

The S&P 500 this month and last undercut its June low but it is now back above that key level. The same can be said from a sentiment perspective. The NAAIM Exposure index and the Bull-Bear spreads for Investors Intelligence and AAII in recent weeks dipped below their Q2 lows but have since recovered.

Why It Matters: Important lows often get re-visited one last time before trends turn and rallies become sustainable. It will be a lot easier for stocks to build on recent strength if optimism is increasing. It does indeed take bulls to have a bull market. Confirmation that this was just a test is twofold: staying above the Q2 lows and continued improvement beneath the surface (including seeing more stocks make new highs than new lows). 

In this week’s Sentiment Report we take a closer look at how investors are feeling and how (if at all) we can take advantage of it.

We continue to be handcuffed by earnings season. Some of the best setups we like right now are in stocks slated to announce earnings over the next week or two. As an options trader, I don't like to position ahead of imminent earnings announcements. That is tough binary risk to control.

Today's trade has earnings coming up in a little over a month from now, so that'll have to do. At least it gives us some time to build a little cushion. Because if we're wrong in this trade, it's likely we'll find out pretty quickly over the next two weeks.

We retired our "Five Bull Market Barometers" in 2020 to make room for a new weekly post that's focused on the three most important charts for the week ahead.

This is that post, so let's jump into this week's edition.

This week we're looking at the stock from the capital goods sector. Stocks from his sector continue to show strength in a consolidation type of market setup.

We had a resting GTC order filled in the Paid-to-Play portfolio:

From the Desk of Ian Culley @IanCulley

The dollar is dropping!

It’s finally time to bet on some sustained downside action, and the euro is my vehicle of choice.

I laid out the conditions that would flip my outlook on the euro earlier this month. Three weeks later, the pieces have fallen into place for a bullish position.

Let’s take a look.

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

This is still the one folks.

I've been in the camp that we're only getting bull markets in stocks around here if the Dollar is falling.

And well, a funny thing happened last month: The Dollar started falling, particularly against the most important crosses.

This happened once the journalists finally realized the Dollar had been so strong. And you know what tends to happen when they finally get the memo ;)

Take a look at the Dollar rolling over vs both the Euro and British Pounds:

I was talking with a relatively new day trader last night at my twice-monthly trader meetups here in Colorado. We were chatting about stop losses. Or more specifically, his inability to stick to his “mental stop loss levels.”

As you can imagine, this was leading to him taking occasional big losses – which were wiping out good runs in the market.

He’d make a few hundred bucks several days in a row. He’d then lose it all (and then some) on one bad trade.

A lightbulb went off in his head when I reframed the importance of not taking big losses. No doubt many of you are shaking your heads and uttering – duh!

But for this gentleman, it took me breaking it down this way for him to get the picture: 

We came into the week anticipating some volatility expansion out of this range, which could potentially be playing out given yesterday's action.

This was the largest daily price change for most coins over the last month. Ethereum's broken out of this short-term trading range, with Bitcoin following closely behind.

From the Desk of Kimmy Sokoloff

Two heavy hitters, $GOOGL and $MSFT, reported last night, and they both traded lower after hours.

Futures seem to be holding steady.

The largest insider transaction on today’s list was reported in a Form 4 filing by the Swiss investment company BB Biotech AG.

The biotechnology-focused fund reported a purchase worth roughly $2.2 million in MacroGenics $MGNX.