Welcome to our "Under The Hood" column for the week ended October 2, 2020.
What we do is analyze the most popular stocks during the week and find opportunities to either join in and ride these momentum names higher, or fade the crowd and bet against them.
We use a variety of sources to generate the list of most popular names. There are so many new data sources available that all we need to do is organize and curate them in a way that shows us exactly what we want: A list of stocks that are seeing an unusual increase in investor interest.
Whether we're measuring increasing interest based on large institutional purchases, unusual options activity, or simply our proprietary lists of trending tickers... there is a lot of overlap.
The bottom line is there are a million ways to skin this cat. Relying on our entire arsenal of data makes us confident that we're producing the best list each week and gives us more optionality in terms of finding the most favorable trade setups for our clients.
This week I chat with Howard about the things that he just doesn't think are going to happen. What can we check off? He mentions major moves in the Nasdaq and also Apple missing on a quarter or new product.
He then flips the script and asks me about what's changed in my life since becoming a father. Tune in to find out!
In the futures markets, commercial hedgers are considered the "smart money" because they deal in a business that the asset they're trading is related to. On the other hand, speculators are simply outsiders looking to benefit from the price movements in that asset.
Hedgers also have much deeper pockets than the typical rank and file speculator, so when they're making extreme bets in one direction or another...we want to be paying attention.
...And right now, commercial hedgers are selling Copper like there's no tomorrow.
In this episode I get to chat with one of my all-time favorite journalists, Frances Horodelski. She was one of the first people to interview me on TV when I was still in my 20s and I don't forget that. She believed in me early on. That's really cool.
We've continued to do interviews together over the years but today I flip the script and ask HER the tough questions. We discuss the role of Technical Analysis in both markets and financial media. As a former Wall Street analyst herself, she brings unique perspective and experience to traditional media. This was really informative and a lot of fun!
One of our favorite opportunities that was discussed in last week's Under the Hood segment finally triggered our entry today. And continued elevation of options premiums in out-of-the-money calls sets up a great way for us to participate in a bullish move in a limited risk fashion.
So far today, I’ve ignored what I can only assume are tens of thousands of posts and articles dissecting last night’s debate. I’ve said it before — As market participants, the election doesn’t interest us. It’s the change in seasonal strength this time of year that has our attention.
But I’m sure they’ll continue pumping out more political gossip than anyone could possibly absorb. After all, it’s 2020. Most folks are stuck at home, anxious, and searching for any meaningless distractions they can find.
If you’re nervous about the election or the markets, tonight’s your chance to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. September is over and the fourth quarter begins tomorrow. That means we have fresh batch of monthly candles to review! It doesn’t get any better than that…
If you do one thing this week, it needs to be a thorough review of these longer-term trends. It’s one of my most important rituals that allows me to tune out the noise better than most.
For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it’s a custom index or inverted, who knows!
We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.
You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?
These are the registration details for our Live Monthly Candlestick Strategy Session for Premium Members of All Star Charts.
This month’s Video Conference Call will be held on Friday October 2nd @ 8AM ET. As always, if you cannot make the call live, the video and slides will be archived and published here along with every other live call since 2015.
